Most Exciting Tour State Ever? Vollering's Agony of Defeat; New Racing Strategies Emerging; Doping Stand-off Continues; Lappartient Squabbles with the Teams ...
Key Takeaways:
● TdFF Stage 8: One of the Most Exciting Races Ever?
● Vollering’s Agony of Defeat
● Are New Racing and Breakaway Strategies Emerging?
● Doping Quagmire Intensifies
● Lappartient Squabbles with Teams
● Teamtrak Set to Kick Off in 2025
This past weekend saw a full-court press of racing action, with the Tour de Pologne wrapping up and the Vuelta kicking off, but the Tour de France Femmes stole the show and commanded the lion’s share of audience and attention. The final stage of the women’s event served up one of the most thrilling races in recent memory as Kasia Niewiadoma edged out defending champion Demi Vollering by a mere four seconds. Viewers were glued to their seats after Vollering’s aggressive racing on the final stage saw her take the win and come within four seconds of overcoming her pre-stage 1’15 deficit to Niewiadoma. With the final podium rounded out by the unheralded Pauliena Rooijakkers at just ten seconds back, this was one of the closest and tightest Tour podiums of all time. The slow-motion pursuit, which gradually unfolded over the course of the stage’s two massive climbs, the Col du Glandon and Alpe d’Huez, acted as the perfect advertisement for what is possible when the top talents in women’s cycling are given a chance to compete on the sport’s most iconic and storied terrain.
After the stage, the ecstasy of Niewiadoma, who just recently emerged from a five-year-long winless streak, was starkly contrasted with the misery of Vollering, who visibly struggled with the bitter taste of defeat. Compounding the sting for Vollering was the fact that had any number of small things gone slightly differently, she could have easily sealed her second-consecutive TdF Femmes overall victory. (1) She narrowly lost the photo finish on Stage 4 against Puck Pieterse, which would have given her an additional four-second time bonus; (2) Lidl-Trek’s Lucinda Brand offered to help pace Niewiadoma in the valley prior to the climb of Alpe d’Huez, putting her in a much stronger position at the base of the climb, and; (3) Eventual second-place stage finisher Rooijakkers decided that her best chance of winning the overall or the stage was to sit on Vollering’s wheel all day and not contribute any help. And finally, (4) all of these events pale in comparison to the pain and anger Vollering must feel due to the notable lack of support she received from her team after her late crash on stage 5. Observers couldn’t help but speculate that Vollering’s record new contract and impending move to FDJ-Suez next year accounted for this seemingly aggressive lack of support from her team. Had any of these events unfolded differently, she would probably have salvaged enough time to win the overall with her “Alpe”-conquering performance. But the most distressing part of this whole incident is her team’s apparent willingness to sacrifice a Tour de France victory in order to spite a departing teammate.
While Poland and the Vuelta were understandably overshadowed by the non-stop action at TdF Femmes, some interesting tidbits did emerge. Jonas Vingegaard further confirmed his full recovery from his terrible crash earlier in the season by winning the overall at Pologne, despite the course not being particularly well-suited to him. (He apparently targeted this one-week race instead of the three-week Vuelta, to ensure that he was available for the birth of he and his partner’s second child.) 21-year-old Thibau Nys continued to quietly make the case for being one of the sport’s most accomplished young stars by winning three sharp, uphill stage finishes at Poland. Meanwhile, at the opening of the Vuelta, Wout van Aert showed he is beginning to come back to his best form after a difficult season of injuries, finishing third, second and first in the opening three stages, as well as taking the overall race lead.
Multi-tasking UCI President David Lappartient took a short break from applauding French Olympic athletes and snapping VIP selfies last week, to engage in an unseemly battle with some of cycling’s top teams. Lappartient claimed on X that he had caught Visma-LAB chief Richard Plugge spreading “fake news” by suggesting that the lack of race radios led to safety incidents during the Tour of Poland. Lappartient seemed to be calling into question whether Plugge (and most of the top-tier teams) want radios for safety purposes, or simply in order to be able to direct race strategy. The radio debate comes around repeatedly, and there are some strong arguments on either side of the debate. The UCI has always believed that race radios “stymie attacking racing, produce stale tactics, and hand over strategy entirely to the sports directors in the cars behind. The upshot, they claim, is that racing is less entertaining.” Many fans and a few riders agree, but most of the riders and team staff believe that radios are important not only for race strategy but also for critical safety purposes, like warning of upcoming road furniture, sharp turns, weather changes, and so on. There have been proposals for one-way radios, where riders could ask for help, or for a central safety channel, where all teams would be apprised of upcoming safety concerns by a single central service. Both sides seem to be digging in their heels on this topic, and the outcome is not clear – nor is Lappartient’s reason for directly intervening.
As the final men’s grand tour of the season unfolds, modern racing seems to have teams more closely evaluating their riders' energy expenditures at every point of a three-week race, even in transition stages. It used to be that every team took an interest in placing riders in the early breakaways – to gain hours of valuable marketing exposure. This was particularly true of smaller teams who didn’t have a GC contender. However, given the structure of the race and the need to conserve support riders for the mountain stages, there's greater risk in this strategy for teams that have realistic podium objectives. This year’s Tour de France actually saw a couple of instances where no break formed, something most fans are used to seeing. As veteran commentator The Inner Ring observed, “a doomed move going up the road feels almost essential” and “the illusion of suspense beats the lack of it.” This evolution in the way teams approach flatter sprinter-friendly days could force race organizers like ASO to reconsider how they structure these stages, perhaps by adding short, explosive climbs and/or KOM (or even UCI) points – to encourage attacks. This is particularly true since the increased emphasis on UCI points due to promotion/relegation now forces (particularly lower-ranked) teams to focus on finishing 2nd-15th on sprint stages, in order to earn points.
After a few seasons of going all-in for rare breakaway stage wins, smaller teams may be wondering if time spent up the road actually delivers the value than they previously assumed, especially as the battle for sprint stage wins becomes more intense and the start of broadcast airtime in many markets misses the early breakaways anyway. One observation is undeniable: winning a stage is so difficult to achieve that after 21 days in July, nearly half of the teams went home from the Tour without the marketing exposure of a single stage win. But consider this: the second-division teams that focused on UCI points versus getting airtime in early breakaways (most notably Israel-PremierTech and Uno-X Mobility) went home with a relatively healthy points hauls due to their focus on racking up top ten sprint stage finishes instead.
The ongoing conflict in anti-doping governance between WADA and USADA escalated last week, but gave no hints on how drug testing and sports integrity might move forward or evolve after the Chinese swimming debacle and tit-for-tat accusations of governance lapses. USADA CEO Travis Tygart stated that there was nothing in WADA’s statutes that prevented national anti-doping agencies from using athlete informants to break apart suspected large-scale doping operations – even if it meant allowing those athletes to continue competing after being caught using PEDs. USADA also provided receipts and clarifications that, in fact, WADA knew of, and explicitly supported USADA’s informant-based operations. There are two major implications: it shows that the so-called Olympic “sovereignty of sport” wielded by WADA and the IOC to shield the organizations from criminal law is now on life support. USADA creatively levered WADA’s statutes with various arms of the Department of Justice to use non-criminal sanctions – a doping positive and suspension – to blur the lines and dismantle a criminal operation in which the athlete was a cog. And the anti-doping model introduced 24 years ago which confers powers to both the NADOs and the sporting governance bodies is overdue for an overhaul. There is too much ambiguity as to how doping cases are to be handled, and this allows cases that should be adjudicated according to the WADA code to be quietly shelved for a variety of technical and discretionary reasons.
As this stand-off continues, anti-doping observers and critics are falling into two camps. One group is polarized against USADA, claiming that it is destroying the fairness of elite sport by allowing doped competitors to continue cheating after being caught, thus deliberately putting clean athletes at a disadvantage. The other is amplifying the quiet part of the dysfunctional anti-doping model out loud: that WADA is a buffer to prevent major doping cases from impacting the revenues of the IOC’s chartered sports and its coveted Olympic games. In other words, the focus is on revenue generation – not necessarily sporting integrity – and it doesn’t matter whether the athletes are clean or not. As renowned doping defense attorney Howard Jacobs presciently posted on Twitter in late 2018 regarding WADA/USADA bickering, “the WADA code is a deeply flawed document that no group of athletes with real representation (i.e., a strong union) would ever agree to.”
Another new cycling format and venture is scheduled to kick off in 2025. Officials of the indoor track cycling league Teamtrak announced that its new league would kick off next year, bringing a portable indoor velodrome to existing U.S. arenas, starting with four key events in 2025 and growing to twenty different events within five years. The sport will feature location-based teams of four men and four women who will earn equal pay and prize money. The league is financially backed by Legends Growth Enterprises, the giant sports marketing and development agency and is supported by “brand ambassadors” including former cyclists Frankie Andreu, Nelson Vails, and Freddy Rodriguez. This venture, masterminded by former Olympic track cyclist and race organizer Dave Chauner, has been in the works for several years, and actually had a major kickoff event several years ago, but stalled during the COVID years. The other new cycling venture, which we last discussed about a year ago, is the National Cycling League (NCL) which most recently said that it was “pausing operations” in 2024, and also focusing on a restart in 2025. However, the last media posting on the group’s website is from more than one year ago, and it is not clear what the NCL’s longer-term plans are.