Key Takeaways:
● An American World Champion!
● Can the USA Leverage This Event for Future Growth
● Vollering Takes the Women’s Race
● The UCI Issues Its Initial Report on the Future of Cycling ...
● ... Salary Caps and Women’s Cycling Will be Key Aspects
● Hot Takes: Rapha Cutbacks, Nike’s Share Price …..
The world’s best cyclists descended on Montreal for the UCI Road World Championship road races over the weekend, and the city didn’t disappoint – hosting a cycling celebration that felt like a genuine success from start to finish. The compact circuit around Mount Royal allowed the city’s residents and fans to pack the course, producing what point-to-point racing rarely can: repeated, up-close looks at the race as it unfolded, lap after lap on climbs lined with spectators. Competitively speaking, the short, punchy ascents on each circuit over the mammoth 270 kilometer distance produced an attritional race that rewarded strength and racing intelligence. And with Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard absent, the event shed the predictable script of recent years, with no single dominant rider able to ride away from the field at will – at least until the heroic finale.
Thus, the world’s best riders found themselves unable to open meaningful gaps which precipitated a chaotic, deeply tactical race; moves went clear, looked destined to stick, but were inexorably brought back as the favorites reshuffled at the front. Eventually, after over 200 kilometers of what looked like all-out racing, American Brandon McNulty ripped clear at a rare calm moment, opening a gap large enough to hold off the final-lap surge, winning the first World Title for the U.S. men since Lance Armstrong won on the Oslo circuit in 1993. Unexpectedly, it also kept the rainbow jersey with McNulty’s UAE team for the third consecutive year. It was the kind of open, unpredictable racing the sport has been missing, and it made for one of the more entertaining championships in years.
The shift from singular dominance to a tactical game seemed to benefit the United States men’s team, with McNulty’s win built on a collective effort that saw the U.S. place three riders in the top ten, with Quinn Simmons fourth and Matteo Jorgenson eighth. No other nation managed more than one in the top ten. On a day when the Belgian and French squads burned their resources early in an attempt to launch Pogačar-esque winning attacks, the Americans had the numbers and the cohesion to cover moves, disrupt chases, and put their strongest rider in position at the right moment. That depth raises an intriguing question about the future since this generation of American riders is currently spread across several different WorldTour teams, often working as high-end domestiques for other teams’ leaders. An interesting hypothetical question: if that talent were consolidated on a single team built around American leadership – much like Dave Brailsford’s Team Sky project did for British cycling – could the U.S. could have a realistic path to the one prize that has eluded it since the Armstrong era: an American Tour de France victory? Such a course of events would certainly offer a much-needed boost to the lagging American cycling market.
The women’s race was an amazing cap to a season in which new rivalries heated up, new stars emerged, and Demi Vollering proved that she has overcome all her past weaknesses. With the help of arguably the strongest squad in the race, Vollering and her Dutch compatriots seemed always to be at the front and in control, despite two key moments of chaos. First, a mid-race crash which decked many potential candidates including defending champ Magdeleine Vallieres; tactically, this simplified nothing because it created the potential for exceptionally strong support riders to play their hands without having a team leader to look after. And second was Vollering herself, who may have misread the field’s remaining resolve by going on a flyer at roughly 40 kilometers to go and getting reeled back as a result. Yet she had the tactical nose and reserves to keep at the front, mark Kasia Niewiadoma Phinney perfectly and outlast the Polish star to take the world title. With that win, Vollering finished what may be considered one of the all-time seasons for any pro rider, taking Flanders, Fleche Wallonne, Liege Bastogne Liege, the Giro d’Italia, and the Tour de France Femmes.
The rubber must now meet the road if American cycling can capitalize on its Montreal success. This is an unprecedented opportunity to energize and accelerate a variety of rider membership, talent development, sponsor relationship, and media management initiatives – all of which could start to shift the sport from its Euro-centric pillars and begin to more effectively tap into the world’s most lucrative sports business market. These are some of the same topics we explored in October 2015 following the Richmond edition of the World Championships, albeit USA Cycling was in a much different position at that critical juncture. While the races were exciting and put cycling into the U.S. sports limelight for a hot week, the federation’s leadership was in the middle of turning over from long-term CEO Steve Johnson’s administration, and a long, slow downslide in membership, domestic races, and organizational change began. U.S. women’s cycling has been a strong point, particularly on the track, but the progress in the two years since Kristen Faulkner won gold at the Paris Olympics seems muted in light of the rapid development of the UCI’s Women’s WorldTour. The U.S. arguably has the deepest untapped talent pool in global cycling, when weighted for youth sports saturation and scholastic sports. Can the shine from McNulty’s gold stir a sleeping giant?
The UCI issued the initial report on its widely-acclaimed Future of Cycling project. The effort was initiated last February, with a call for input from the full spectrum of cycling stakeholders. It is a well-written and comprehensive document, which draws upon many of the economic and governance ideas and solutions which we and others have promoted over the years. But like in any strategic plan or initiative, the secret to success is not so much in the written document or the ideas proposed as it is in the actual implementation of those ideas. And in that regard, we can only wait and see how seriously the UCI decides to push for real and lasting change. The tone of the UCI responses to many of the suggested initiative areas seems a bit tepid. More critically it is hard to see how any real change can occur if neither the ASO nor RCS were directly involved. (Neither were named in the credits, but perhaps their input was blended with other AIOCC race organizer members.) Similarly, there was very little individual rider input, though some of the rider associations did respond. Nonetheless, we would like to maintain optimism that some real change can result from this process and it will be interesting to see what the next steps are.
As the UCI evaluates reform proposals, the movement towards some type or budget or salary cap to level the playing field is the area that may lead to the biggest challenges. We’ve explored various approaches to salary caps and made comparisons with other sports in the past, and there is no doubt that cycling will face various obstacles and resistance as it considers a version of regulation. Challenges are sure to come fast and potentially delay the rollout; more troubling are the consequences that might come if not every team decides to play by the rules. As if to illustrate the inherent challenges, news came last week from the English Premier League that Man City was found guilty for 115 financial irregularity charges around the league salary rules, including payer payment infractions that circumvented league regulations. The key takeaway from this latest instance of cap circumvention is that team and league success will not prevent criticism or consequence. The club, which won eight Premier League titles, seven League Cups, four FA Cups, and the Champions League during the 13 years spanning the investigation, may likely face points docking, bans from interleague play like the Champions League, and other financial hits. Given the likelihood that cycling’s premier teams will be loath to reshuffle successful (and often talent-stacked) rosters to fall in line with a cap, the regulatory body empowered to oversee such transition will need to be invested with real authority and enforcement powers.
One key focus of the UCI’s reforms needs to be women’s cycling, and while images of professional women champions featured prominently throughout the report, there were only a handful of direct references. But make no mistake, the segment poised for the greatest growth in every dimension of success that cycling measures is the global women’s sporting market, which behaves differently than parallel men’s sports. The Sports Business Journal picked up on two of the biggest stories in that gold vein last week, first, by diving into the massive popularity of women’s collegiate sports like volleyball and basketball. A volleyball tournament drew 40,000 to AT&T Stadium, the Las Vegas “Players Era Volleyball Showcase” tallied 1.7 million weekend viewers, and most recently, the Big Ten/SEC Challenge at Wrigley Field pulled in over 43,000 attendees. Separately, at a recent business summit, Rock Entertainment Group CEO Nic Barlage, which owns one of the WNBA’s newest teams, the Cleveland Sirens, said “These will be all billion-dollar brands in the next five to seven years.” Women’s pro cycling is seeing the same looming opportunity at exactly the right moment to realize that vision. The million-dollar question is: can the UCI move fast enough to position and sustain the sport for its moment in the sun?
Hot Takes:
- The UCI announced that Ladislav Demko, a former coach at a Continental level women’s pro team would be banned for ten years for “aggressive, disrespectful, and demeaning language as well as acts of acts of isolation, humiliation, intimidation, and infantilization towards a rider.”
- According to the highly-regarded sports and politics newsletter Geosport, the private equity community poured $55 billion into sports investments between 2019 and 2024 – and the trend has only accelerated since then. This is a sharp departure from older ownership models where teams and events were typically owned by wealthy families or regional entrepreneurs. And private equity investors have sharply different motivations and objectives, often within fairly short timeframes, Geosport notes that “this paradigm shift demands rigorous academic inquiry into evolving governance models, shifting fan relationships, and the long-term societal implications” of a sports industry driven more by short-term financial objectives.
- As we’ve discussed in earlier AIRmails, divestment in sports events hosted in the Middle East has forced the cancellation of several sports events, in Formula 1 as well as the Saudi Arabia championships of the WTA tennis tour. That women’s event has found a new home in Charlotte, NC, starting in 2027 through 2029. Formula 1 appears to be taking a more optimistic view of event safety in the Gulf states, with four Grand Prix events on the preliminary calendar for next year: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi.
- Organizers of the Run Rabbit Run 100-mile run event in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, announced that both the men’s and women’s divisions would enjoy a prize purse of $100,000 – thought to be by far the biggest prize offering anywhere in the sport of ultrarunning. Throughout the sport however, as in several others, discussions continue regarding the actual relationship between the prize money on offer and the quality of the competitive field.
- Rapha, the high-end apparel company announced this week an “ongoing transformation program” that would include CEO Fran Millar stepping down after only two years on the job “to allow new leadership to guide the next phase” of the company. Few additional details were shared. Steuart and Tom Walton, the majority owners of the company, reiterated their support for the brand, despite nine consecutive years of financial losses.
- Last week, shares of running shoe manufacturer Nike were dropped from the benchmark S&P 100, following a 78% percent drop in the company’s stock price. Nike’s problems go back to the beginning of COVID when the company moved away from its wholesale marketing approach, and the lack of innovative new products over the last few years. The company also points to slower European sales, and difficulties getting a new China operation up to speed.