The Power of Sports; Team Jumbo-Visma as a Model for the Sport; NCL Raises Funds to Move Forward; Zwift Moves to Control E-Cheating ...
Key Takeaways:
· The Power and Joy of Sports
· Team Jumbo-Visma – A Model for the Sport
· NCL Continues to Move Forward
· Zwift’s Efforts to Control E-cheating
This weekend provided an extraordinary reminder of the power, suspense, and pure joy of sports. Fans witnessed the most exciting and nail-biting World Cup final in history, the biggest comeback in NFL history, and a full slate of close games and buzzer-beaters from across the NFL and NBA. Sports can command our attention, inspire us, and are a welcome distraction from day-to-day challenges and global geopolitical conflicts. Above all else, sports can unite us – as evidenced by the estimated two million people who poured into the streets of Buenos Aires yesterday to celebrate Argentina’s exciting victory. But as the excitement winds down, we must balance that enthusiasm with the cold and harsh reality behind sports – episodes of governance corruption, athlete cheating, increasing politicization, outright sportswashing, and a never-ending focus on profits. With respect to the World Cup, we have to remember the preposterous financial cost of hosting the event – now estimated at as high as $300 billion – but also the incalculable human costs tolerated by Qatar in its quest to recast its image, all the while aided and abetted by FIFA. Similarly, we are reminded that as Messi and Mbappe, the incomparable stars of Sunday’s game, drop their national allegiances and reunite on their commercial Paris St. Germain team, their lucrative salaries are also paid by the Qatari government – the owner of that team. Perhaps things have been this way since the days when the Cold War turned the Olympics into an ideological battlefield – or maybe even since the ancient Greek games. But modern sports often seem trapped in a web of exploitive strategies that threaten to co-opt its globally engaging power for the economic and political benefit of a few. Sport is one of humanity’s most inspirational and powerful institutions. Participants, fans, investors, governance partners, and the media must remain vigilant in the future to preserve it and harness its power for all.
There is not much doubt that Jumbo-Visma is the team of the year after winning the yellow, green and polka dot jerseys at the Tour de France, and grabbing the most wins and topping the UCI points ranking. The squad has now finished top three in terms of victories and points for three years running, and – despite the early retirement of Tom Dumoulin – with names like Roglic, Vingegaard and Van Aert, it has to be considered the sport’s current “super-team.” With a parallel women’s team (featuring the GOAT Marianne Vos), Under 23 men’s development team, and an ice-skating squad which has captured numerous Olympic gold medals and world championships, Jumbo-Visma also represents a business model that the rest of the sport would do well to emulate.
Three years ago, we chronicled the team’s rise from the ashes of Rabobank, as it began to break into the top tier of WorldTour teams, despite a much lower budget. We highlighted the fact that team manager Richard Plugge had come from a business background, unlike most of his compatriots in the sport. Plugge, who has now run the team for ten years, underlined the need to run a profitable and sustainable business venture – one that could hopefully build value over the longer-term. At the time, cycling economist and Professor Daam Van Reeth said, “Richard Plugge is viewed as one of the only team managers with a true long-term strategy.”
Now that the team has reached the pinnacle of the sport, Plugge is focused on how to stay there. In a discussion this week with The Outer Line, Plugge underlined his on-going pursuit of new and alternative revenue sources for the team, as well as his staff’s continuing focus on every component of the team’s competitive performance and preparation. He has sought the advice of New Zealand’s highly successful All-Blacks rugby squad – to understand what makes their organization tick, and how they’ve been able to stay on top for so long. Plugge also understands that his success depends on the health of the overall sport, and he is increasingly taking on an informal role as one of its leaders – serving as President of the AIGCP, and speaking out on what pro cycling needs to do to overcome its current challenges and constraints. Given the often bombastic, self-promoting or juvenile team leaders who sometimes dominate the airwaves, Plugge is a voice of maturity and reason; the sport could use a few more leaders like him.
It won’t come as good news for the rest of the sport, but even after such a dominant performance on the road, Jumbo-Visma also appears to have “won the off-season” transfer market by bringing in a number of high-potential riders that should allow them to further advance their “total cycling” racing philosophy. Their star signing, Paris-Roubaix winner Dylan van Baarle, adds important depth to their one-day classics squad, and along with fellow newcomer Wilco Kelderman, will offer strong support for their grand tour GC contenders. Meanwhile, their talent outflow – headlined by the loss of Tom Dumoulin – are relatively minimal, as Dumoulin’s role was significantly reduced in the final years of his tenure anyway.
Other teams who came out as “winners” in the transfer market are UAE and EF, who add GC firepower in Adam Yates and Richard Carapaz, respectively. These changes came at the expense of Ineos, which has suffered another off-season in which they have struggled to retain their proven top-tier talent while failing to bring in new riders who can reasonably challenge for immediate wins at the sport’s biggest races. The British team seems to be eschewing blockbuster signings and instead are betting on their talented young core of riders, including Egan Bernal, Tom Pidcock, Ethan Hayter, Luke Plapp and Carlos Rodríguez. This strategy, which marks a drastic strategic shift from their glory-days of the mid-2010s, is admirable, and is arguably a better blueprint for a long-term foundation. However, it may test the patience of team patron Jim Ratcliffe, who is investing around $55 million per season, far more than any other team. However, he still lacks a squad that will realistically be able to win the Tour de France, a primary goal in 2023.
It was reported this week that the National Cycling League – which we discussed a few weeks back – has successfully raised $7.5 million to get its new criterium racing league up and going in 2023. The first season will consist of ten teams competing for a $1 million purse, in four criterium races through the streets of Miami, Atlanta, Denver, and Washington D.C. “The goal is for our teams to instantly become the top teams in U.S. pro racing next year.” Putting up the cash – said to be the largest ever private investment in U.S. cycling – were Will Ventures, other private investment funds, several professional football players and Michele Roberts, former director of the NBA Players Association.
The world of physical Esports got a jolt this week when Zwift banned – and essentially publicly shamed ‒ a rider for allegedly hacking his data feed during a competitive event. In its announcement, Zwift systematically dismantled a South African rider’s Grand Tour-winning stats: 8.5+ W/kg (power) and 90+ mL/min/kg (VO2 max physiology) over a 4-minute, 16-second effort during a UCI’s Esports World Championships qualifier. This performance was virtually impossible for a rider who had no prior similar “in real life” (IRL) results, and allegedly only rode three hours weekly at low intensity on the Zwift platform.
Zwift’s actions – as the de facto governor of cycling Esports – have several repercussions which transcend the sporting integrity of its platform. Zwift highlighted the key technological measurement and connectivity standards, and formally tied the authenticity and accuracy of the platform’s measurement standards to implied human physiological limits. (These standards will need to be peer reviewed and formally published, if any Esports policies and decisions are to be enforced by or challenged in the Court of Arbitration for Sport/CAS in the future.) There are also direct parallels here to the challenges currently faced by anti-doping agencies face. First, Zwift’s inferred details of how it measures, receives, and monitors the data from connected devices may have unintentionally provided a hacking blueprint to better exploit the platform. More importantly – and recognizing the variability of “lab-based” fixed-trainer efforts vs. actual on the road output capabilities – Zwift demonstrated guardrails by which a bad actor could calibrate a successful electronic doping strategy. Athletes have manipulated their physiology in the biological passport model to avoid doping detection, and could similarly log a history of doctored rides to establish a “normal” Zwift performance pattern. Participation in physical Esports will continue to grow, and there is a clear need to further develop the standards, decision processes, and real-world consequences of cheating on the virtual playing field.
In a similar vein, an interesting article this week in Cycling Weekly debates the question that many of us have asked ourselves while watching modern races: “Is it really credible that today’s riders are beating the times of yesterday’s dopers without some secret ingredients of their own?” One side of this debate highlights all of the modern developments and recent “marginal gains” – more aero bikes, better tires, better nutrition, power-based training programs, improved hydration and so on – all of which have made the racing faster. “It is rare that sport stands still. What once seemed impossible is now possible, as attested by countless examples through history: four-minute mile, two-hour marathon, or riding the Tour de France at 42kph.” The other side of the debate suspects that there still may be some extra-curricular chemical assistance going on inside the peloton, pointing out that riders always seem to stay one step ahead of the testers. The resources behind most anti-doping programs are relatively minuscule compared to the money behind teams and top riders, and the frequency and intensity of testing definitely saw a fall-off during COVID. At the end of the day, it is a difficult question to answer with certainty, but there seems to be a broad-based consensus that the situation is much improved from ten and twenty years ago….. “there are still some people who are trying to cheat the system, but it’s not the norm anymore.”
We will be skipping next week’s issue, and then returning with a Special Issue on January 2, 2023. We will also be switching our platform to Substack – hopefully making it easier for you to refer and share the newsletter with others. Happy holidays and best wishes for the new year!!