Final Thoughts on the Vuelta; How to Create a Winning Environment; Cycling Mega-"Merger" - Good or Bad? The Crit Situation; New Joint Agreement for the Riders; Challenges in Women's Cycling
Key Takeaways:
● Concluding Thoughts on the Year’s Most Interesting Race
● Creating a Winning Environment
● Is a New Cycling Mega-Merger Really In the Works?
● Turmoil in the U.S. Crit Racing Scene
● New “Joint Agreement” for the Riders
● Despite Gains, Women’s Cycling Still Lags Behind
Now that the dust has settled after all the excitement and melodrama around the Vuelta (and before we address the big new story of the week) let’s review a few overriding conclusions. All manner of observers have weighed in with widely divergent analyses and opinions on the race – see below – but a few key verdicts are emerging. First, it is difficult right now to imagine how other teams are going to seriously challenge Jumbo-Visma next year especially after the team’s riders also swept the European Road Race Championships over the weekend. Just yesterday, the leader of perhaps their most likely challenger, Team UAE, bemoaned the situation, saying that the team “was impossible to beat.” While Jumbo-Visma has clearly built the most dominant team in the sport, it also faces a complicated, if enviable, challenge in figuring out how to balance its immensely talented roster and sustain its dominance. Rumors abound that Primoz Roglič will have to jump to another team if he wants another crack at the Tour de France GC. However, he still has a year left on his contract, and team principal Richard Plugge has just said that “Roglič is our king and the king is difficult to let go” – notably, Plugge didn’t say “impossible.” Certainly, the sport’s attention will be focused closely on Roglič and any possible transfer in our brief off-season.
As we highlighted last week, Jumbo-Visma did about as well as it could, in terms of managing its “embarrassment of riches” situation during the last week of the race. While the team eventually coalesced around popular domestique Sepp Kuss for the victory, it was clearly difficult and internally controversial when management essentially ordered two of the top riders in the world to sit back and act as supporting domestiques for Kuss. In retrospect, the team’s internal drama through that third week seemed to go largely unnoticed by the mainstream media – allowing the program to emerge with a priceless feel-good story just as it is searching for a new title sponsor. Recent positive coverage has included the Wall Street Journal’s story about Kuss’s mom watching the race from afar during a hiking trek in the Dolomites, the Religion of Sport weighing in semi-accurately on the nature of pro cycling, and Scott Galloway – co-host of the wildly popular Pivot Podcast – shouting out Kuss, Vingegaard, Roglič and the whole team for their incredible teamwork during his Friday show. To their sportsmanship credit, both Vingegaard and Roglič did close ranks during the last few days, and from all outward signs were genuinely happy to see their loyal and long-suffering teammate capture the victory. But it’s also clear that both were frustrated at the lack of tactical freedom; these kinds of elite athletes, like thoroughbred racehorses, are not accustomed to being reined in when they could be going all-out.
After the fact – and in perhaps the only clear misstep by the team – many questioned why Vingegaard was there at all, which practically guaranteed controversy, even if Kuss had not been a factor. After his early season Giro win, Roglič was reportedly “promised the Vuelta” by the team, and there was no indication that Vingegaard would also race it until the last minute. However, from a practical perspective, how does one say to the winner of the Tour de France – “no, you can’t go this race, you have to stay home.” Despite Kuss’s hard earned victory, the now-simmering duel between Roglič and Vingegaard for leadership complicates the entire team’s dynamic. How will the team handle two out of the three generally acknowledged best riders in the world under one banner? It will be interesting to watch how J-V management addresses this challenge, given such historical dramas as the LeMond vs. Hinault war within La Vie Claire in 1986 or the Froome vs. Wiggins grand tours with Sky in 2011 and 2012.
One of the reasons Jumbo has a ”log jam” of top talent – and has been able to dominate the 2023 season – is that they are applying logic borrowed from sports leagues with more refined roster construction science (like the MLB and NBA) and are signing riders with the highest potential upside, not necessarily those producing the best results at the moment. In essence, they have identified that the key to winning big bike races is finding riders with the highest potential talent, regardless of hype or results, and signing them. While it seems simple, it’s not how most teams operate. For example, while Jumbo-Visma signed Kuss after director Grischa Niermann saw him make an impressive bridge between two groups at the 2017 Tour of California, Ineos was basically throwing money at whichever young stars were standing out the most in the junior ranks, or taking riders represented by super-agent Giuseppe Acquadro, who dominated the flow of riders to the team for years, trusting that they would blossom into stars. Clearly, we are now seeing how this strategy has left them with many good riders, but no true GC stars.
And as if TJV’s dominance was not already sufficiently disrupting the sport, there were rumors this weekend – from reputable sources at the Dutch Wielerfits website – that the team may be “merging” with Patrick Lefevere’s Soudal-Quickstep team prior to next season. This lends even more skewed meaning to the phrase we just used above – an “embarrassment of riches” – if Wout van Aert, Jonas Vingegaard, Primož Roglič and Remco Evenepoel were potentially all to be on the same team. While this rumor has obviously energized cycling’s hungry media crowd, and while it will create endless commentary and forecasts, there would appear to be serious roadblocks. For example, both teams already have nearly full 30-rider rosters under contract for 2024, meaning they would need to find new teams for, or likely pay the salaries of, the 30 extra riders that wouldn’t fit in the roster of a newly merged team. The UCI may have legitimate questions as to how this would affect the balance of power in the sport, and given the registration process, it seems highly unlikely that such a deal could unfold prior to the 2024 season. Furthermore, Belgian and Dutch teams have typically been highly competitive, rather than cooperative, with each other in the past. Additionally, if Jumbo’s GC superstars, Vingegaard and Roglič, are already feeling crowded by each other, adding Evenepoel into the mix would make the situation seem impossible. Having such a concentrated level of talent would certainly create larger internal problems. And finally, it doesn’t seem like this kind of concentration of power would be a good thing for the overall sport. There is the possibility that the merger is being pursued by TJV more out of economic necessity, but if one of the most successful teams ever can’t find a title sponsor, it speaks volumes about the general health of cycling and the sport’s standing in the broader sports marketing world. We suggest waiting for more definitive news before drawing any specific conclusions.
The Cyclists’ Alliance has been the leading athlete’s association for women professional cyclists worldwide since it incorporated in 2017, and it recently published its annual state-of-the sport survey and report for 2023. Among its less encouraging findings in the survey are financial inequities – many do not earn a team salary or have a contract longer than a year. Many riders earn less than €10,000 per contract and must pay out of pocket for professional services like physiology testing, and must work a full or part-time job outside of racing to support themselves. Dishearteningly, outside of the Women’s WorldTour teams, a “positive and safe” team environment isn’t the norm. Not surprisingly, TCA contract assistance requests have doubled over 2022 with all of these factors in play. But paradoxically, the survey confirms that the women’s peloton is among the most educated and professional in all of sport, underscoring our observation that it is the most under-utilized brand and sponsor ambassador resource in all professional cycling. Women’s cycling has made great strides, but a clearer business strategy and coherent marketing vision could completely reshape the sport and perhaps the collective voice of its riders can spark that change.
In a largely unreported but potentially significant development, CPA President Adam Hansen and AIGCP President Richard Plugge announced completion of a new joint agreement between the riders and the pro teams. This document is what serves as an embryonic collective bargaining agreement between the two parties. Although very primitive and brief in comparison to other sports that enjoy much more sophisticated athlete unions, and although there are as yet no details available on the new agreement, Hansen’s tweet mentioned improvement in terms of minimum salaries and insurance coverage. Under any circumstances, this should be seen as a step in the right direction, as the agreement had been revisited or updated for several years.
As we lamented in an earlier AIRmail, the NCL, American Criterium Cup, and L39ION CRIT racing series are all competing for eyeballs and the emotional hook to draw fans into their respective racing products. But the calendar is proving to be too crowded and saturated for criterium aficionados, pros and fans alike. That over-saturation, especially in a niche market, drives down profitability because every successive venture within the space cannot differentiate its value proposition from any other competitor’s offering, essentially creating a race to the bottom. We suggest that the lessons of other sports can inform a better path for these criterium ventures – consolidation. There are two precedents and both are unfolding in real-time, as the LIV Golf-PGA Tour merger steadily moves forward towards a unified calendar and professional Pickleball (the fastest growing sport in the U.S.) just announced that its two rival tournament series will merge its events and business interests. In both cases, and particularly for Pickleball, the mergers maximize the potential audience reach by offering a unified sports entertainment product – rather than confusing fans with multiple professional tournament series competing for space and diluting the overall product and profitability.
While the NCL’s roadshow may be the most visible, turmoil has been the norm for the rest of the U.S. pro criterium scene. Justin Williams was suspended by USA Cycling for the second time in two years, reflecting the organization’s new tougher stance on dangerous riding. The in-race infraction was documented by multiple on-bike cameras as Williams was in an altercation with a rival team’s rider, Thomas Gibbons, at the Littleton (CO, USA) Twilight Criterium on August 5. Gibbons and Williams were fined by USAC for their roles in the episode, but only Williams was suspended – ostensibly for the act which led to the potentially injurious crash. Williams’ prior suspension was for fighting at the Salt Lake City Criterium in 2022. Williams is apparently still hard at work organizing L39ION’s CRIT Championship in Florida this coming October. However, this latest disciplinary action deprives L39ION of one of its strongest assets for the first half of the 2024 season. His suspension begins April 13 and ends on June 13 and will coincide with the proposed start date of the American Criterium Cup – USA Cycling’s own pro criterium series.
A Belgian law that went into effect in July to prevent gambling addiction among its citizens may have inadvertently put the Intermarché-Circus-Wanty (ICW) team in jeopardy. News broke that the team’s management had failed to pay its riders and staff on time in recent months, and the new law’s impacts may be the reason why: on a rolling schedule through 2028, Belgian sports teams like soccer clubs and cycling teams will have to reduce the size of betting company logos on their uniforms and ultimately will not be permitted to display the logos of betting company sponsors on their uniforms altogether. Within Belgium’s borders, gambling companies won’t be able to advertise via terrestrial and online broadcast channels, in print, in movie theaters or public spaces, and all online advertising including social media sites. The “Circus” in the ICW team’s sponsorship refers to a larger gaming corporation, Gaming 1, and according to sources that sponsor is already halving its contribution for 2024 and could be on an exit path altogether. There is gray area regarding the future of one of the sport’s longest-running sponsors, Lotto, as this is a state-sanctioned lottery and game institution rather than a commercial enterprise like Circus. However, any sponsorship shortfall and restriction for a smaller team like ICW is a major blow that could be difficult to remedy.
A Jumbo Visma/Soudal Quickstep merger makes no sense because first of all, it would not be a merger. It would be JV taking over SQ for what? For Remco Evenepoel who JV doesn't need given all its other talent? Or for Julian Alaphilippe, who's obviously past his prime, or Fabio Jakobsen who's leaving the team? JV doesn't need SQ and such a takeover would simply mean one less team in the peloton, and less interesting racing - think back to the boring times when Sky dominated the tour.
Very thoughtful!