Pogačar the Greatest Ever: Is the Debate Over? How Will Trump's Tariffs Impact the Bike Industry? The NIL Revolution; Consumer Sports Spending Increases ....
Key Takeaways:
● Pogačar the Greatest of All Time: Is the Debate Over?
● Trump’s Tariffs: Implications for the Bike Industry
● The NIL Revolution Continues
● Why Do Endurance Athletes Cheat?
● Bank of America: Consumer Sports Spending Up
Three of the sport’s biggest stars, Mathieu van der Poel, Tadej Pogačar, and Wout van Aert, finally faced off for the first time this year at the Tour of Flanders. And in a sign of the times, the battle was won in decisive fashion by Pogačar, who has now won three out of the last four Monuments, along with four out of the last five biggest one-day races he has competed in (Monuments, World Championships and Olympics). At just 26 years old, he has eight career Monument wins, which ranks him first among active riders (one ahead of Van der Poel) and 6th all-time. Considering he is doing all of this while winning three out of the last five Tours de France plus a Giro d’Italia, there is no longer much doubt: Pogačar is well on his way to being considered the best rider in history. The argument could be even stronger depending on how he fares at Paris-Roubaix next week.
Pogačar’s career win tally is even more impressive given how quickly he has racked them up. His Monument wins pace in the four years since his 2021 Liège–Bastogne–Liège is ahead of Eddy Merckx’s at the same point in his career. (Merckx would go onto win 19 Monuments, so theoretically Pogačar has to keep this pace up for at least five more seasons to match.) And he is also on track to reset the Tour de France record book. Only a handful of riders have even attempted to win both the biggest one-day races and Grand Tours in the same season; those who did, like Bernard Hinault, were generally competing against a much more stratified peloton in a less professionalized or globalized sport than today, meaning that a strong case could already be made for Pogačar to be considered the best rider of all-time. Even with several great riders – Mads Pedersen, Van Aert, and Van der Poel – all setting personal bests up the famous Flandrian climbs like the Oude Kwaremont, Pogaċar displayed scant stress before riding clear for his second Flanders title in three career starts.
Tariffs are here, now what? Near-universal tariffs were announced that will affect a broad swath of consumer goods entering the U.S., including every single category of mass market and specialty cycling products. As has now been universally explained across virtually every existing media outlet, the apparent goal is to increase importation costs enough that companies will start to on-shore the manufacturing of smartphones, cars, footwear and apparel, and even bicycles in order to remain in business. However, most of these same outlets have accurately pointed out that the calculations underpinning these new and increased tariffs aren’t likely to have a meaningful effect on U.S. manufacturing because of the retaliatory/reciprocal tariffs that are being imposed by other nations on U.S. goods as a result of the policy shift. Thus, the tariffs will likely have various detrimental effects across the economy and all of consumer spending. Setting aside partisan bickering on the topic, the effects on the cycling industry are undoubtedly going to be harsh.
One brand took the perspective of how the tariffs will affect its mix of imported and domestically sourced products; in the short term, consumers in the specialty and lifestyle categories (read, local bike shops) will not be affected until the overwhelming deadstock of 2023 and 2024 bike models and related cycling goods are sold out. But costs will skyrocket as products already en route to the U.S. get hit with the increased tariffs, and the stressors will multiply as all brands struggle to realign supply chains due to former havens like Vietnam being phased into the tariff scheme. Even U.S. producers of cycling products won’t be immune because tariffs on raw materials not domestically sourced will also increase production costs, and reciprocal tariffs in other markets will dampen demand. While all of this will undoubtedly shake up the industry and potentially drive survival mergers and duress, the increased costs even for entry-level bikes could have an additional suppressive effect on participation in U.S. racing – an unfortunate consequence of the tariffs.
Any doubts that the Name/Image/Likeness revolution hasn’t completely reshaped the “amateur” athletics landscape were buried by this year’s NCAA basketball tournament. The men’s and women’s tournament brackets were largely driven by two narratives: the power of major conferences to remunerate athletes and create elite teams that dominate the game, and the power of athletes to freely move between schools during the “open transfer” period to play at whichever school offers them the most money and NIL endorsement exposure. The most powerful school conferences in terms of broadcast rights can now afford to sign the best players and therefore dominate the national championship landscape, as evidenced in the men’s tournament Final Four of #1 seeds Duke, Houston, Florida, and Auburn. The collegiate career of Hailey Van Lith perhaps best illustrates the changes: after helping lead Louisville to the Final Four in 2022 and Elite Eight round in 2023, she transformed her playing value into NIL currency and transferred in successive seasons to help lead LSU (‘24) and TCU (‘25) to the Elite Eight as well. The NIL forces at play in big ticket team sports are also reshaping collegiate track and field, swimming, gymnastics – in short, nearly the entire Olympic sporting landscape. While it is almost certain that athletes will take on the IOC juggernaut for a cut of the revenues (a matter of when, not if), elite sports are now professional sports. And as an aside, we still believe that NIL could reinvent athlete development in U.S. cycling in the future.
A recent article examined the psycho-social patterns as to why so many endurance athletes attempt to cheat. The analysis suggests three key reasons why, despite the risks, many athletes decide to break antidoping rules. First, although there are undoubtedly plenty of bad actors in the sport who are motivated by greed or indifferent disregard for other competitors, some people may simply be unaware of the norms and responsibilities of anti-doping, suggesting that we need to do more to educate all athletes about cheating. Second, many athletes see their personal times and records as being a key part of their identity, and simply want to improve upon those figures, because they believe others judge them primarily on that basis – a factor evidenced by a rash of cycling age-group gran fondo and Master-level doping positives over the years. And third, “gray area” optimization techniques (read “marginal gains”) can often encroach a thin line into enhancement or doping activities that are illegal – something which is all too often cited in pro cycling’s current athlete transgressions. The article doesn’t provide solutions per se, but opens debate as to whether our current systems work without better addressing the peer group and individual level factors. One facet not considered by the author is whether or not a competition like the Enhanced Games could blur every line of the doping criteria spectrum and altogether rewrite the legality, morality, and psychology of cheating in the future.
A Bank of America research report this week highlighted the growing importance of sports in the American economy. Average household spending on spectator sports hit an all-time high last year, with consumers spending an average of $1,122 on sports – defined as everything from sporting and athletic equipment to attending sporting events and games. The report also underscored the importance of live events in supporting local economies, citing the example of the recent Las Vegas Super Bowl, which saw visitors causing retail spending in the area to increase by more than 8% over typical time frames. The report also emphasized the shift to streaming athletic events, particularly among younger viewers – a factor driving subscriptions for the entire online content industry – and the explosive growth across almost all of women’s sports. The upcoming FIFA World Cup and 2028 summer Olympics in the United States are likely to cause these spending figures to accelerate even more over the next few years.
The new cycling and lifestyle print magazine Fausto, launched only a few weeks ago, announced that it will publish the official Tour de France magazine in the U.S. The new magazine, started by the original founders of Peloton – which was acquired by Outside a few years ago and then later shut down – expects its first regular issue to mail in June. At a time when almost all cycling print magazines have gone totally digital, and when the cycling media more generally continues struggling economically, it will be interesting to see how a new specialty print magazine can do in this highly competitive and shrinking marketplace.
Finally, we take a look at the unlikely intersection of innovation which revolutionized professional cycling and … Major League Baseball? Everyone in our sport recognizes that the advances in materials, aerodynamics, tire design, and training over the last two decades have helped riders to shatter records. However, the MLB – one of the most tradition-heavy team sports on the planet – has been slow to “reinvent” its game, other than the development of “money=/-ball” analytics and the advent of the pitch clock to reduce game duration. That is, until the New York Yankees debuted so-called “torpedo bats” in an opening day 20-9 blowout in which the first three batters hit home runs on the first three pitches of the game! The new custom lathed bats optimize the sweet-spot for hitters to maximize bat speed, and ultimately how hard the ball can be hit. With distance runners benefiting from advanced sole plates, and golfers using innovative fluid composites in their driver clubs, what will be the next great innovation to make pro cyclists faster? Whatever it may be, hopefully it will be manufactured in a domestic factory out of locally-sourced materials; otherwise, no one may be able to afford it in the U.S. when it hits the market.