Is Van der Poel the Greatest One-Day Racer? Basque Country Crash Alters Competitive Outlook for the Year; Lappartient on Crashes; Concerns Re Rwanda Worlds; Zeeman Departs ...

Key Takeaways:

●        MvdP the Greatest One-Day Racer?

●        Alpecin-Fenix – One of the Best-Managed Teams

●        Serious Concerns about the Rwanda Worlds?

●        Iztulia Crash Alters Competitive Outlook for the Season, and …

●        … Lappartient Weighs in on What’s Causing the Crashes

●        Zeeman Departs Team Visma-LAB

The cobbled classics wrapped up this past weekend with Paris-Roubaix – the only one-day race with any crossover appeal in mainstream sporting culture, due to its compelling juxtaposition of warriors on ultra-modern machines battling vintage cobblestone roads. As many expected, Mathieu van der Poel polished off his dominant Classics campaign by executing a powerful solo breakaway with nearly 60 kilometers remaining, to win the race by three minutes, the largest winning margin since 2002. Van der Poel’s dominant spring run saw him complete the sweep of E3, Tour of Flanders, and Paris-Roubaix – each with nearly identical solo attacks – harkening back to legends Fabian Cancellara, who also won all three races back in 2010, and Tom Boonen, who was the last rider to stick such a long solo attack at Roubaix back in 2012. Considering Van der Poel has three Flanders and two Roubaix victories (the all-time record for Flanders wins is three and Roubaix is four) in just 10 total combined starts at these races, as well as six career monument wins (leading all active riders) in just seventeen total starts (the all-time great Eddy Merckx won five Monuments through his first seventeen starts), we wonder if we’re currently watching Van der Poel build a case to be considered the best one-day racer of all-time. Matched against his peloton contemporaries, van der Poel has settled debate regarding his career-long rivalry with Wout van Aert (van der Poel has won six Monuments and a World Road Championships since van Aert last won a Monument), and surpassed Tadej Pogačar’s monument victory total in the course of a single week – with Pogačar elsewhere preparing for his coming Giro d’Italia/Tour de France double attempt.

On the flip side, van der Poel’s dominance this spring robbed the cobbled classics of some of their usual intrigue; some even described the races as boring. But there is an important factor behind his incredible run beyond the immense confidence, talent, and raw power needed to break clear far from the finish line thrice consecutively: his Alpecin-Deceuninck team. Alpecin is in only its second season at the WT level and running at a fairly modest budget by most accounts. Yet, it has quickly transformed itself into the sport’s premier one-day racing squad as evidenced by finishing first and second (via Jasper Philipsen) at Roubaix for two years in a row, and by becoming the first team in the modern era to sweep the first three Monuments of the season. While MvdP and Philipsen are the big names, the team also has assembled a deep bench to support that success. Run by brothers Christoph and Philip Roodhooft, the team has clearly demonstrated that – in an age of teams with mega-budgets, like Ineos, UAE, and Visma-LAB – mid-budget squads can carve out great success with a well-run organization and laser-focus on key strengths and clear priorities. For example, by avoiding the high costs associated with signing top GC riders, the team has been able to pad their talent pool in terms of one-day race and stage-winning talent. Although they haven’t yet received broad attention or acclaim, we would suggest that Alpecin-Fenix is one of the best-managed and tightly-operated teams in the peloton.

The women’s edition of Paris-Roubaix on Saturday was one of the most exciting races of the spring campaign – and provided Lotte Kopecky (SDWorx-Protime) with an opportunity for redemption after missing out on the finale in last week’s Tour of Flanders. And at the risk of repeating ourselves after the Flanders masterpiece, the women’s P-R was an even better race-of-the-year candidate. Attacks started early on the 148.5 kilometer course, and a few race favorites like former winner Lizzie Deignan (Lidl-Trek) went out due to crashes, but Kopecky opened the endgame with an acceleration at 48 km to thin out the frontrunners, and precipitate an elite selection leading into the velodrome sprint. That sprint – in which Kopecky was isolated and boxed in to start – showed why she is both a road and track world champion, as she came around the top in the last 200 meters to take the win from Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek) and a surprising Pfeiffer Georgi (DSM-Firmenich PostNL).

The six-stage Itzulia Basque Country race was supposed to serve up an exciting GC battle between top contenders for the 2024 Tour de France, but instead saw a bad crash that potentially already decided the Tour’s outcome. Midway through Stage 4, Jonas Vingegaard, Remco Evenepoel, and Primož Roglič were all involved in a crash that left Roglič significantly banged up, Evenepoel needing surgery for a broken collarbone and shoulder, and Jonas Vingegaard in the hospital with multiple broken bones and severe chest trauma. In addition to reopening the debate as to why serious crashes seem to be happening more often (see below) and whether race organizers, or the riders themselves, should be responsible for providing safer race conditions in the future, the crash upended the competitive landscape. While it is too early to know exactly how these injuries will affect Roglič and Evenepoel, it seems likely that Vingegaard, who was still in the hospital over the weekend, will not recover in time for a Tour defense. Considering he is the only rider who has proven he can ride with, and even drop, a fully fit and healthy Pogačar, this unfortunate development increases the chances of Pogačar winning his third Tour title, as well as the near-impossible modern-era Italy/France double. This scenario likely distills the list of contenders for the remaining major races in 2024 – Monuments, Grand Tours, Olympics, and World Championships. Pogačar and van der Poel will be heavy favorites for the foreseeable future.  

The Itzulia crash also precipitated heated and open debate about rider safety. UCI President David Lappartient weighed in with two bold statements, suggesting first that advances in equipment – particularly disc brakes – may be contributing to crashes during high-speed, high-stakes maneuvers like the Itzulia descent. Second, he opined that “50% of the crashes are due to (rider) attitude,” in which he refers to their inattention to all the dangers which may be present in a race at the moment they decide on a risky line. The power and modulation of disc brakes may encourage late braking into corners, reducing margins of safety as compared to “feathering” speed via rim brakes, but much of today’s peloton came up into the pro ranks solely using disc brakes and are expert in their use. We can debate rider “attitude;” male pro racers may stereotypically be hyper-aware, borderline control-freak personalities with higher thresholds for fear and pain than the average human being – but they certainly aren’t suicidal. (Notably, crashes in women’s racing have not been so unusually scrutinized.)  While we encourage debate, we would question Lappartient’s assertions, firstly because both appear to deflect from the UCI’s responsibility to reinforce race safety through its various policies and ownership of race course certification standards. And setting the disc brake discussion aside, Lappartient’s behavioral critique projects blame on the riders; racers race, and tragedy can occur when road hazards are not adequately marked out for them in time to make critical decisions which they train for daily. Safety should be a joint objective, not a problem to pass around without resolution.

Following the horrific genocide in Rwanda exactly 30 years ago, Rwanda embraced cycling during its recovery and elevated the sport into national focus, a story encapsulated in the 2012 film, Rising from Ashes, and embodied by the many Rwandan riders who raced internationally and in the UCI WorldTour. Rwanda’s flourishing economy and domestic stability under President Paul Kagame since that era is a complicated affair – as is its hosting of the upcoming 2025 UCI World Road Championships. Indeed, its capability to execute a plan in the next 18 months and actually stage the events seems in doubt. A series of exposé articles uncovered widespread corruption and lack of leadership in Rwandan cycling governance, which measurably stunted the potential of the athletes under its developmental umbrella. More recently – and completely beyond the radar of cycling’s press – organizers of the Tour of Rwanda are currently being investigated for sexually abusing female hospitality staff. The UCI, for its part, remains committed to Rwanda and the continent through its Project Africa initiative. But there remain serious suspicions that the WCs are simply an attempt at sportswashing. However, we believe a successful WC event in Rwanda should remain a priority. For the UCI, it could be the ultimate expression of its mission to promote cycling as a sport that unites humanity. (To learn more about Rwanda, the genocide and its global context today, watch this documentary.)

Although praise and acclaim generally rolled in for the first two years of a highly successful Tour de France Femmes, there are now nevertheless some early concerns about the future of the event – particularly with title sponsor Zwift entering the third year of a four-year contract. Given that much of the bicycle industry is in free fall, and with Zwift itself having undergone a number of management changes and layoffs in recent months, this seems not an unreasonable concern. The television coverage and audience in the upcoming edition will be critical, especially with the Paris Olympics forcing the race to move to a less desirable time slot in mid-August and eliminating the strong lead-in slot it has had directly following the Tour de France the past two years. As the article cited above puts it, “there’s rarely a moment to rest on one’s laurels in this sport – and that’s particularly true for race organizers, and team owners.”

Finally, the biggest news in cycling not related to race results is the impending exit of Visma-LAB’s renowned performance director, Merijn Zeeman. The trainer has overseen the programs of Vingegaard, Roglic, and Sepp Kuss as the trio dominated all of the recent Grand Tours, and Zeeman’s absence could be a significant impact to the team. Our friends at Wielerflits published a who’s-who list of ten of the best performance directors in pro cycling today who might replace Zeeman in 2025 – or could it be an unknown from outside the sport? (Use of Google’s Translate web browser plug-in or similar feature recommended.)