Challenges in Women's Cycling; More Doping Questions; CLues from Romandie; Risks of Amateur Cycling; The Traka Event - Will Europe Begin to Dominate Gravel?

Key Takeaways:

● Challenges Facing Women’s Cycling

● More Questions Around Doping

● A Few Clues Emerge from Romandie

● Risks Inherent in Amateur Cycling

● The Traka Gravel Event: Is Europe Beginning to Dominate in Gravel?

A recent post by the co-founder and former co-owner of the women’s AG Insurance–Soudal team highlighted critical, long-term stumbling blocks facing the women’s sport. Natascha Knaven-den Ouden’s insights flew under the radar of the English -peaking press, but two points stand out: in one anecdote, the unfortunate mixing of different talent levels in Women’s WorldTour races often throws inexperienced riders into the fire of top-level competition without the necessary level of skills and racing competency to cope with the situation. And this leads into the second point: beneath the shine of the WWT’s greatest riders and best teams, there is a dearth of development programs and races to sustain the sport to grow beyond its current scale. “Without regional races, strong national calendars, and structured development programs, we’re setting up a system where only the most exceptional talent breaks through – and where many others drop out before they’ve had a chance to develop,” wrote Knaven-den Ouden. This assessment is nearly universal across the sport’s many top nations and particularly applicable to U.S. amateur cycling. In one sense, the decline of amateur racing has reduced the available junior racing talent pool, yet other avenues like collegiate racing continue to produce exceptional riders – more physically mature but also less experienced. We believe that there is a sleeping giant here that could completely redefine cycling’s talent development model and will examine this in greater detail shortly.

The Men’s WorldTour is in a slight lull as we move on from the spring Classics and prepare for the Giro d’Italia, which starts this Friday in Albania. Nonetheless, the quiet clash between João Almeida and Remco Evenepoel at the six-stage Tour de Romandie held some interesting clues as to what we can expect later this summer at the Tour de France. Almeida, who had struggled to convert talent and top form into stage racing wins, controlled the race with a measured approach and did not lead until the conclusion of the final stage. This is his second WorldTour stage race win in just the last month. The rise of Almeida as a reliable stage racing option means that Team UAE has a legitimate second option at this summer’s Tour de France, should their superstar Tadej Pogačar suffer an injury, and represents a viable foil should Visma-LAB execute the same sort of one-two punch strategy they used to defeat Pogačar in 2022. If Almeida’s win pulled UAE’s Tour fortunes into tighter focus, Remco Evenepoel’s mercurial form in 5th place – which saw him extend his recent run of hitting the highest highs while also suffering through lows – provided little guidance about his likely performance in the upcoming Tour, and whether he’ll be able to prevent it from becoming another two-man race.

Behind Almeida, an interesting subplot of the race was the quietly impressive performance from Bahrain-Victorious’ Lenny Martinez, who would go on to finish second place overall, 26 seconds behind Almeida. In an earlier time, the sight of a 21-year-old French rider finishing second in a WorldTour stage race after winning the Queen stage and putting up a strong final time trial would have kicked off a surge of excitement in France. However, as a sign of just how much modern cycling values extreme youth and potential upside, Martinez almost seems to be overshadowed by teenagers like Paul Sexias, who have accomplished less but are still so inexperienced that teams and media fawn over their potential to become Pogačar-like titans. However, this type of group-think shouldn’t diminish Martinez’s success, which includes winning two stages at WorldTour stage races just so far this year. In addition, he is still continuing to improve every season, and appears to be actively working on his weaknesses, like time trialing, which could allow him to go on to become an extremely well-rounded grand tour GC prospect.

While the Men’s WT peloton enjoys a short break before Friday’s Giro d’Italia, the Women’s WT peloton is diving into a major stage racing showdown at the Vuelta Femenina, with a re-match between the defending Tour de France Femmes champion, Kasia Niewiadoma and superstar Demi Vollering. Unfortunately, the race opened in Barcelona not with a celebration of elite sport, but with a farce. At the start-line of the opening team time trial, widespread disorganization at the UCI’s pre-race bike checks left multiple teams scrambling as riders were delayed, start times were missed, and full squads were split apart—undermining months of preparation in mere minutes. Visma-LAB’s Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, whose team had multiple riders miss the start due to the delays, summed up the mood with a scathing (and swiftly deleted) post slamming the amateurish handling of the TTT, accusing the jury of inaction and the UCI of failing its duty to fairness. According to WielerFlits, the Movistar Team, which reportedly arrived late to the checkpoint, created a bottleneck that impacted subsequent teams, but, at the end of the day, it seems absurd that the on-site UCI commissaires weren’t able to deal with the issue in a timely manner, especially at one of the top stage races in Women’s cycling.

A cluster of doping-related headlines concerning tennis landed last week with broad implications for sports that have internally-run anti-doping departments. In the wake of positive tests for three of the sports leading stars in recent years – including former women’s world #1 ranked Simona Halep, current men’s world #1 ranked Jannik Sinner, and current women’s world #2 ranked Iga Swiatek – the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) has apparently been inundated with player inquiries about various supplements and medications. The three players variously claim to have been exposed to performance enhancing substances through contaminated supplements or via inadvertent contact with someone using a banned medication – and each of their doping cases were remarkable for novel defenses that relied more on reasonable doubt than the considerable scientific findings.

One issue raised by this development is if it is appropriate for an anti-doping body to provide direct supplement advice or product guidance to athletes in a testing pool? There is a master list of substances published and updated by WADA each year, and according to the WADA Code, each athlete (and by extension, their professional entourage) is expected to cross check the list against any supplements they elect to ingest and any medications they may be prescribed by physicians. Interestingly, the ITIA has faced claims of “favoritism” for certain players’ cases in recent years – particularly Sinner’s. But at least tennis has an internal AD body to support it; pro cycling saw its independent internal body, the Cycling Anti-Doping Foundation, disbanded in favor of the IOC’s International Testing Agency just over four years ago; many other sports have switched to the ITA as well. As a counterpoint at least, the ITIA did ban a former Grand Slam doubles champion for a doping methods infraction a few days prior.

The unfortunate death of several riders at the recent Tour of Flanders sportif and a respected British amateur at the Mallorca 312 Gran Fondo caused many to reflect on the camaraderie, challenges, and inherent risks of cycling. Reports indicate that at least some of the riders may have suffered a cardiac event which precipitated a crash or suffered the cardiac event after they fell. Our colleague, cardiac surgeon Dr. William Apollo, reminded us of research which underpins an article he authored with TOL concerning sudden cardiac death (SCD) in cyclists. While specific data regarding mass cycling events is hard to find, the general risk of death while riding a Gran Fondo is considered to be rare – perhaps 1:1,000,000 per kilometer ridden – but this includes all causes including crash trauma and other health issues. The at-large risk of SCD in elite athletes is about 1:40,000 to 1:80,000, which – while rare – makes prominent headlines because we often know the athletes. An equivalent to the Gran Fondo scene is marathon running, where the estimated risk of SCD is about 1:200,000 and is more common in men and those with underlying conditions (if they actually know they have one). In general, however, these tragic events are always difficult to medically analyze from a distance because we never really know all of the details such as autopsy and lab test results, and of course the athlete’s family has the right to privacy as well. While the risks may be low, all cyclists should heed their doctors’ advice to minimize the risks and maximize the healthy benefits of our sport.

This weekend was the 7th edition of The Traka gravel event in Girona, Spain, featuring 4,500 participants over multiple distances on different days. Given the popularity of this event, and its setting in and around Girona – one of the world’s cycling capitals – it would not be a stretch to call it the world’s second most important gravel race (after next month’s Unbound). Like many gravel races, The Traka still has safety issues to figure out: it still runs on roads not closed to traffic. Nevertheless, the growing success of this event underscores the general growth of gravel racing in Europe. It’s beginning to seem like we could see a similar trend here to what occurred in mountain biking a generation ago – which got its start in the U.S. but gradually became dominated by European events. Is gravel racing destined for the same fate? Could Europe overtake the U.S. in terms of both broader participation and competitive success?

Importantly, The Traka featured a free live video stream available globally for both the men’s and women’s races for its marquee 360-kilometer race. This feature alone puts it ahead of all the major U.S. gravel races, like the Life Time Grand Prix, the Belgian Waffle Ride, and SBT GRVL. Those events have all optioned to not produce live streams thus far. Video broadcasts of gravel races in the U.S., typically held in remote rural locations, are more expensive and logistically complex than Europe, which features more cellular signal density. (Some events in the U.S., like the Tour de Bloom, have had moderate success with this modality.) It’s hard to imagine American gravel races gaining broad appeal among fans and sponsors without engaging live streams of races, but it would not surprise us if Europe pulls ahead of the U.S. in a cycling discipline we pioneered – again.