"Unbound" Evolving; Yates Steals the Giro; New Doping Methods? Overlooked Races of the Week; UCI Points Battle; the "Enhanced Games" Ludicrous Forecasts ...
Key Takeaways:
● Unbound Continues to Deliver – and Evolve
● Yates Takes Giro After Puzzling Stage 20
● More New Doping Techniques?
● The Forgotten Races of the Week
● The “Caitlin Clark” Effect and Women’s Cycling
● The Enhanced Games’ Ludicrous Forecasts
The Unbound gravel race took place over the weekend in Kansas, with more than 5,000 participants. Saturday's race featured impressively high speeds and an increasingly popular 350-mile XL event, which was won on the men’s side by Rob Britton and in the women’s race by multi-sport phenom Heather Jackson. But the marquee 200-mile race attracts the majority of the event’s elite athletes, and this year – for the first time – featured a live-stream broadcast on YouTube. New Zealander Cameron Jones and Polish cyclist Karo Migoń triumphed in the race, which feels appropriate considering the pro field that converged in Emporia was chock full of foreign participants, including current and former WorldTour talents. Gravel racing has developed into a fully international sport: in the men’s 200-mile race, for example, the top six riders were from six different countries, with the top American, Keegan Swenson, in seventh place. The women’s race was similarly popular among global riders, with only four Americans in the top ten.
Both elite athletes and gravel insiders commented that the sport is getting more sophisticated and professional, and faster every year. Elite athletes in the race also described how more team-based tactics are starting to take place at Unbound. While the word “team” in gravel racing can have different meanings – maybe an actual team, or maybe just two or three athletes who share the same bike sponsor – some racers are definitely now working together. Some are even predicting that domestiques will make an appearance next year. In any event, it’s clear that a “globalized” version of gravel racing is evolving to take on more features of professional road racing as the sport’s investment and exposure levels increase. The freewheeling early years of Unbound and other gravel races were defined by “the spirit of gravel” – a counter-culture ethos of privateer competition that was in distinct contrast to the tightly controlled world of UCI road racing. But much like the transformation that mountain bike racing went through 20-30 years ago, that free spirited attitude is now giving way to a more formalized and professional sport. It would not be surprising to see gravel racing come up for consideration in the Olympics soon, perhaps at the expense of the individual time trial or a track racing discipline. In any event, gravel racing’s emphasis on female participation, equal men’s/women’s prize money and race distances as well as its inclusive spirit has been a shot in the arm to bike racing around the world.
The Giro wrapped up over the weekend, with Visma–LAB’s Simon Yates taking the overall win after a jaw-dropping comeback on Stage 20. The Colle delle Finestre final GC set piece was the same climb where Chris Froome staged a historic comeback in 2018, knocking Yates out of the race lead in the process. In a remarkable twist of fate, Yates used the very same climb to reverse his fortunes. Beyond the poetic symmetry, the 32-year-old Brit’s ride served as a reminder that, despite the ongoing “youth revolution,” superior tactics and patience can still win grand tours. Yates and his understated Visma team entered the stage 1:21 behind 21-year-old sensation Isaac del Toro and his powerful UAE squad, with no obvious path to victory – especially after he was dropped by Del Toro on the two previous mountain stages. But Visma had two key advantages that UAE lacked: Wout van Aert, and a far superior backroom strategy team. In hindsight, the moment Van Aert got into the early breakaway on Stage 20, UAE should have been on high alert. Instead, they let him build enough of a gap to crest the brutally long Finestre climb ahead of the GC contenders, and this unexplained blunder from Visma’s rivals allowed Yates to link up with the biggest engine in the sport on the flat valley road prior to the final climb.
Visma-LAB’s tactical coup was such that Yates simultaneously crested the Finestre alone in the virtual race lead by 20 seconds while Del Toro and Richard Carapaz were forced into a stalemate, refusing to work with each other. Van Aert emptied his tanks like a rocket assist to help Yates boost his lead up the final climb to Sestrière, capitalizing on the tactical paralysis which solidified between Carapaz and Del Toro. Yates’ finish-line advantage translated into a maglia rosa lead of just under four minutes with only one stage left. Behind, Del Toro added to the surreal optics of the race by essentially surrendering the jersey without a serious fight. He sprinted to the line and celebrated with a finish-line salute, suggesting he still had reserves – but for some reason chose not to use them – perhaps to protect his second place on GC. We may never know exactly what went through the minds of Carapaz and Del Toro as they seemed to simply hand over control of the race to Yates. The stage highlighted the importance of strategy and the determination of the rider, and underlined the fact that in combination these factors can help overpower stronger riders in the endgame.
A key subplot in the Giro was the on-going battle for UCI points. XDS-Astana entered the season over 5,000 points below the relegation line, and any chance of saving their WorldTour license seemed remote. But after a strong Giro, they now sit 17th in the promotion/relegation rankings, one spot above last-placed Picnic–PostNL and comfortably ahead of relegation-bound Cofidis. While Cofidis has failed to score consistently in both WorldTour and lower-tier events, XDS-Astana now ranks third on the year in total UCI points. Their success appears to come from a clear-eyed, data-driven approach: abandoning traditional off-season training in favor of early-season race readiness, and assigning riders to races based on terrain-fit and peak performance periods. With teams like Picnic now unexpectedly fighting for survival, expect more WorldTour outfits to adopt XDS-Astana’s model, where tailored training and smarter race calendars replace tradition in the hunt for survival.
Bombshell news that a British mountaineering team had summited Mount Everest in less than a week – reportedly by using xenon gas treatments to pre-acclimate – is turning out to be a fizzle, according to researchers. According to the team’s guide, they utilized the treatments prior to starting their ascent from Base Camp, which drastically reduced the typical two-month acclimatization period most climbers have to endure before ever making a summit run through the 8000-plus meter “death zone” where humans typically can’t survive without supplemental oxygen. Xenon has a variety of effects on human physiology, including acting as an anesthetic gas, but it potentially provided the climbers with two advantages: protection from brain injury due to reduced oxygen, and blood protein and EPO stimulation to raise hematocrit. The hematocrit boost is known to be modest compared to typical Everest summiteers who can reach nearly 60% hematocrit, especially if climbing without supplemental oxygen. However, the xenon boost could have been augmented in combination with the team’s use of hypoxic tents during their preparation in Britain. Most of the researchers commenting on the feat doubted if the xenon treatments had a measurable effect on their performance, with one notable expert flat-out stating, “From the scientific evidence, I can’t see anything that is definitive or even proof-of-concept yet.”
On the topic of blood boosting in endurance sports like pro cycling, xenon joins cobalt salts and carbon monoxide rebreathing as another noteworthy and dodgy enhancement technique that has emerged in the years since synthetic EPO became reliably detectable. Rumors of each of these methods being used by cyclists have persisted for years, despite only CO rebreathing making recent headlines. While each of the methods provides some kind of hematocrit improvement, the methods themselves carry risks from inducing artificial hypoxia. Thus, the weapons of choice for truly effective blood doping remain synthetic EPO micro-dosing and autologous blood micro-infusions, both of which are still difficult to detect in current WADA testing protocols. Therefore, xenon gas may be more of a red herring than a real catch right now – although in a sport where a 1% advantage could mean the difference between first place and 20th in the chasing pack, we may not have heard the last of this sports science topic.
Trapped in the void of bike races not taking place in Italy or in Kansas this past weekend was the Tour of Norway, held over a spectacular mix of the country’s breathtaking fjords and modern urban circuits. The four stage men’s race was won overall by Visma-LAB’s newest wunderkind sprinter-turned-allrounder, British rider Matthew Brennan. The women’s race was held as a two-day challenge and while it lacked many of the Women’s WorldTour stars, it provided opportunities for others like Justine Ghekiere (AG Insurance) and Mie Bjørndal Ottestad (Uno-X) to demonstrate their capabilities. Ghekiere in particular was tenacious in her stage 1 winning attack on the finishing climb, benefiting from her team’s strong set up (Sarah Gigante and veteran Ashleigh Moolman Pasio were also in the top five). However, Ottestad – who was a major player in last week’s Burgos WWT race with a stage win and 7th overall – launched a determined solo to win stage 2 and take the overall for her Norwegian sponsor. While the Norway event was overshadowed by spectacular solos and pink jerseys elsewhere, it had upsides: the event planners effectively co-ran the men’s and women’s race on similar parcours for the final weekend, and both races provided up-and-coming talent with a tough test of their competitive strength.
Races like the Tour of Norway are critical for developing women’s professional cycling talent, but talent inspiration, identification, and pipeline management will have an even greater impact on the sport’s long-term outlook. Broadcast coverage and availability of live racing content – particularly when the sport’s most recognizable and marketable stars are on the course – are critical for providing role models and inspirational figures who can help attract children into the sport. Hence, we will briefly revisit the “Caitlin Clark effect” on women’s basketball and what that means to a sport’s finances and public image. Clark recently went down with an injury and has missed several games, which has left a measurable dent in ticket sales for all the teams her Indiana Fever have played or are yet to play in her absence. Four of the most viewed live broadcast games in WNBA history have all featured Clark; while fan attendance and TV ratings are up, without Clark, the drop is palpable. It will be instructive to see if there is a corresponding jump when Clark returns, as early as June 14, but with so much of the league tied to her being healthy, every team financially benefits, and the entire league is publicly boosted when she is on the floor. Similarly, the stakeholders in women’s cycling should be paying attention to the broadcast performance of events where the sports stars are not all in attendance, such as the recent WWT Itzulia race as compared to a second-tier Norway event. The calendar is not too crowded in women’s cycling yet, but a careful balance must be maintained to create product scarcity for its most valuable races while not ignoring its developmental events.
Our critique of the so-called “Enhanced Games” last week highlighted its nascent business model, and now comes evidence that the event intends to market its products across a very broad swath of the American public. The organization told Sporting Intelligence that it believes it can sell a $399/month enhancement subscription (yes, that’s per month) to “a significant portion of the United States population.” As we surmised last week, the event is essentially a closed-circuit pill-pumping scheme in which the scientific backers and manufacturers can test their products in novel methodologies, then rebadge, repackage, and offer the products to the public. In essence, athlete doping preparation is the lab, the Games themselves are just a marketing vehicle, and the organization’s telehealth platform is a turnkey revenue engine. The spokesman went on, “We anticipate attracting tens of millions of consumer subscribers who are seeking safe, legal, and medically supervised performance optimization. This projection reflects both the growing wellness market and the increasing acceptance of performance enhancement …” – concluding that the potential market for their services is hence in the $100 billion a year area. As the interviewer noted, “this is extremely unlikely to happen” – perhaps the understatement of the year. However, as we noted earlier, the “Enhanced Games” has very little to do with sport – “sport” is just the context, but the real play is cornering the self-enhancement medication, supplement, and treatment market. While it is unlikely to succeed, it nonetheless represents one of the most self-serving, irresponsible and ludicrous revenue plays in history, with the potential to cause real harm to its participants and target market.