Conflicting Events, But Exciting Racing; Good Week for the U.S.; Victory for "Student Athletes;" Bad Week for Doping ...; Challenges at Zwift ...

Key Takeaways:

●        Another Weekend of Multiple Overlapping Events …

●        … But the Racing Was Exciting

●        Another Good Week for the Americans

●        A Key Victory for “Student Athletes”

●        A Bad Week for Doping

The past weekend saw the 2024 road cycling season light up with 11 UCI pro men’s races spread across two days, accelerating the somewhat low-frequency early season competitive buzz as we start to head towards the spring Classics. The stacked schedule of racing content was again problematic and all but guaranteed that only the most dedicated of fans could consume all the action, hence ensuring that all the races had to fight for scraps in terms of star rider attendance and advertising revenue. (It also diluted the value of the events’ individual TV rights to figurative pennies). This further highlighted just how dearly pro cycling, on both the men’s and women’s side, could benefit from some sort of consolidation, streamlining and, most importantly, coordination between the races. This could (and certainly should) be one of the key objectives of the lately much-discussed and still only vaguely defined One Cycling project.

This clustering of disparate men’s events also severely overshadowed the under-promoted launch of the UAE leg of Women's WorldTour. Fans who were tuned in elsewhere missed a master class in stage racing by SD Worx. World Champion Lotte Kopecky took the GC, along with the prestige summit finish on stage 3, and contributed strong lead-out work for teammate Lorena Wiebes’ sprint wins in the first two stages. Despite SD Worx’s dominating strength, the racing was tactically exciting and provided a glimpse into who the strongest riders will be in the upcoming Spring campaign.

While the timing of all these events may have been less than optimal, the actual on-road action was fantastic, and foreshadowed an exciting year of racing. Alongside a continued surge of seemingly never-ending young talent, like Soudal-QuickStep’s Paul Magnier at the Tour of Oman, superstar Remco Evenepoel came out just as strong as he left off in 2023, with a long-range solo win at Figueira Champions Classic. Similarly, veteran Richard Carapaz looked to be back in top form at the Tour of Colombia, while Monument specialist Mads Pedersen appears to have taken a step up over the off-season – and could challenge the sport’s Big Six at the biggest Spring one-day races. After a dominant weekend at the Tour de la Provence, Pedersen has six wins so far in 2024, with two GC titles. Meanwhile, southern Spain’s upstart Clásica Jaén produced a thrilling race, with national champion Oier Lazkano holding off a Sepp Kuss-led chase group on a course that featured both old world road racing tradition and a fresh dash of gravel.

After last weekend’s notable surge of American victories at the men’s WT-level, solid performances from lower-tier US riders continued the trend this week. Israel-Premier Tech’s Riley Sheehan made the front group in the extremely selective second stage of the Tour de la Provence, and was Pedersen’s primary GC challenger before dropping out due to illness on the final stage. And Tyler Stites, racing for the third-division Project Echelon team in the same event, finished inside the top five of one stage and in the top 15 overall. This is a great result for a relatively unknown rider on a minuscule American team, going up against some of the biggest teams and riders in the sport. These results might not grab the headlines, but having riders outside of the top tier performing well is actually a better indicator for future American success and depth of talent – as it shows that the U.S. isn’t just relying on one or two top riders to garner European-based results.

The market crisis affecting nearly every real-world cycling brand has now definitely jumped to the digital sector, as Zwift – the high-flying cycling esports originator – shed co-CEO Kurt Beidler (resigned) and laid off a further 100-plus employees from its headcount (approximately 20-25% of the total workforce). These layoffs, and the brand’s recent loss of the e-sports World Championship technology partnership to the lesser-known MyWhoosh, confirms just how challenging the new economic reality has become. Zwift simultaneously announced it will discontinue its Zwift Hub/Hub One trainer, which launched just 18 months ago – after prior market leader Wahoo sued Zwift for patent infringement over this product. Thus, news that Zwift would partner with its former foe to manufacture a new trainer shocked analysts and platform critics alike. (The new Zwift/Wahoo trainer will drop to $599 with a year’s Zwift membership included, undercutting the prior $899 Hub One). Zwift previously raised over $600 million of venture capital but suffered from stagnant growth and poorly-executed product-to-market strategy – not a great scenario for a company that predicted it would be taking e-racing to the Olympics just a few short years ago. Hopefully, if and when depressive forces ease inside the overall cycling market, the esport vertical can finally broaden its consumer base.

Following up on our recent segment analyzing the potential impacts of U.S. legal hearings on the concept of amateurism in collegiate sports, the ball is now rolling in favor of the athletes. Last week a National Labor Relations Board handed a victory to Dartmouth College's men's basketball athletes, finally bowing to the obvious: college athletes are technically employees and have the right to unionize and negotiate for a cut of the billions of dollars which big school conferences are receiving today. The ruling suggests that the NCAA will be unsuccessful in sequestering the “amateur” athletes from remuneration across a swath of sports, most visible of which are basketball and football, but track and field – one of the Olympics' prize jewels – seems poised to go a similar route. The IOC, much like the NCAA, has sought complete control over the rights and marketing of its events using the likeness of the athletes that compete – essentially earning off the backs of athlete labor and paying them less than market value for those services. The U.S. ruling (and forthcoming deluge of similar cases) will add fuel to the fire in international courts and could impact nearly every Olympic sport in the process. We'll stay tuned as this story develops further. 

It was not a good week in pro cycling’s doping dumpster, which was set aflame with a new high profile positive test, a flagged biological passport, not one but two doctors hitting the headlines for PED facilitation, and an exposé on doping practices in Spain and possibly other locations today. WorldTour climbing domestique Antwan Tolhoek (Lidl-Trek) was informed of a positive test for an anabolic substance; he may request the B sample analysis by the International Testing Agency (ITA). Anomalies in Franck Bonnamour’s bio passport triggered an adverse finding and provisional suspension as well. Meanwhile, the doctor and central figure in Mikel Landa’s did-he-or-didn’t-he dope saga while on the Astana team, Marcos Maynar (previously banned 10 years in Portugal in a different doping case), will be prosecuted by Spanish authorities for his role in supplying PEDs. More critically, a related police investigation called “Ilex” detailed exactly how athletes were able to use drugs and avoid testing positive within Spain’s anti-doping framework of testers, labs, and privacy laws. And finally – perhaps four years too late – Nairo Quintana’s doctor while at Arkea-Samsic, Fredy Alexander Torres Gonzalez, will go on trial in France for the possession and possible use of “a prohibited substance or method for use by an athlete without medical justification” discovered in the 2020 Tour de France gendarmerie raid. A busy week.

So, what are the takeaways from this messy juxtaposition of doping stories? First, despite broad efforts by the UCI and its anti-doping agency partners, cycling is not immune to new cases. Rather than proclaiming that cycling is clean, we need to focus on keeping it cleaner than our sister endurance sports. Recent waves of positive tests, passport findings, and missed test sanctions across other sports like athletics highlight a growing schism in the sports integrity field: while the “good guys” in the anti-doping organizations are innovating with new tests, the “bad guy” doping scientists are innovating with anti-detection methods and test avoidance strategies that prevent agencies from discovering what the athletes may be using. The testing agencies are increasingly reliant on intelligence reports, informant “hotlines” and surveillance to catch athletes within the defined testing window, or when taking possession of consuming doping products. Subsequently, doping investigations in Spain consistently fizzle-out because the country’s laws are broadly applied to favor the privacy rights of individual citizens and athletes alike. This limits how effectively testers can access the athletes, and how medical information is classified. “Ilex” now joins Operacions Puerto and Hypoxianet in Spain’s unfortunate colloquial history as a doper’s paradise. Nevertheless, all of the aforementioned cases here are in the process of adjudicating and it would not be appropriate to presume the outcomes.

Finally, spare a thought for the fans that pro cycling has historically missed out on if only for the lack of a popular and iconic ambassador like Taylor Swift. Pro football is already the most popular and most watched sport in the U.S., is gaining new fans all over the world (with European franchise cities on the potential horizon), and now arguably has its biggest superfan. Swift's romantic entwinement with Kansas City Chiefs’ star Travis Kelce has boosted the team's viewership, drawing in fans who simply want to catch a glimpse of the Grammy winning artist in the stadium box seats. While that might seem like a sideshow distraction, advertisers have taken note and new product tie-ins and ad placements have shaken up the sport's traditional hard-hitting brand associations. With the Chiefs second-consecutive Super Bowl win this weekend, Swift's presence brought millions of new eyes onto the sport – and the action on the field has the potential to convert those impressions into long-term fans. One estimation set that marketing value at $331.5 million – and that was before the Super Bowl, and the now widely-debated Kelce-Andy Reid “affair.” Just imagine how much a niche sport like cycling could benefit from something like the so-called "Swift Effect?" If Cupid is taking requests this Valentine's Day, we'd love to see a matchmaker's miracle deliver a celebrity superfan to uplift the women's or men's WorldTour in the future.