Vollering and SDWorx Dominate TdFF; Evenepoel Grabs Third San Sebastian, Initial Tour TV Reports; Delayed Punishments; In the Broadcast Booth; The Joy of RAGBRAI
Key Takeaways:
· Vollering Takes TdF Femmes; SD Worx Dominates
· Evenepoel Takes Third Clásica de San Sebastián
· Tour Television Coverage: First Reports
· Delayed Punishments for Miguel Ángel López and Filip Maciejuk
· In the Broadcast Booth
· The Joy of RAGBRAI
The Tour de France Femmes has quickly turned into the flagship event in women’s racing, serving fans up a captivating storyline of rivals, tough racing over challenging terrain, a few controversies, and a worthy winner. Demi Vollering confirmed her ascension to the top of women’s cycling by utilizing a powerful team, confident form, and her competitive fire for the overall win. She ignored a mid-race controversy which resulted in a 20-second time penalty and saw her team director expelled from the race – for an incident involving drafting the team car after a flat tire. She was cool under pressure as the race’s co-favorite with Annemiek van Vleuten, and nonchalantly shrugged off van Vleuten’s mind-games on the penultimate stage en route to a dominant mountaintop victory and commanding lead.
The dominance of Vollering’s SD Worx team can’t be overstated, with four of the seven stage wins (each by a different rider), the teams classification, and the green jersey (Lotte Kopecky). And this underscores a key point we made just prior to the start of the event: the disparity of investment into the top six or so teams has understandably led to a kind of “racing at two speeds” – in which the best capitalized teams with the most talented riders are simply running away from smaller, under-funded or developmental teams in the Women’s WorldTour. While the TdFF provided opportunities for the smaller teams and unknown riders to test themselves, other than an inspirational win by Yara Kastelijn (Fenix), they came away empty-handed in the face of superior riders, tougher successive days of racing, complex tactics, and a general lack of experience.
Remco Evenepoel got his third career victory at the Clásica de San Sebastián on Sunday, winning a thrilling two-up sprint against local hero Pello Bilbao. The win appeared to set Evenepoel up well to defend his title at the upcoming World Championships and his looming battle with the sport’s top GC stars at August’s Vuelta a España. However, it did nothing to calm the rumors of a mid-contract off-season move to Ineos, even though Evenepoel himself dismissed the rumors in a recent interview. On the surface, this strong denial would appear to be the end of the story, but some observers claim inside information on the situation and continue to insist there is something behind these rumors and that an Evenepoel transfer to Ineos is possible in the coming months.
Outside of Evenepoel’s win, it was somewhat difficult not to feel like San Sebastián – which used to be the major event between the Tour and the Vuelta – had lost a bit of its luster. For example, while it used to be contested by some of the biggest stars from the just-completed Tour de France, Evenepoel has won three out of the last four editions coming straight from training camp, which signals the overall level of the event is not what it used to be. And, with the TdF Femmes dominating the weekend, and next weekend’s start to the World Championships causing many of the world’s best riders to sit out in favor of preparation, it seems fair to wonder about the race’s future – lest it suffer a similar fate to the defunct Grand Prix of Zurich – and if it would be better served at a different point in the racing calendar.
A recent report suggests that Tour de France viewership was up in France this year, with a total audience of 42 million people, and an average watch time of five hours and 55 minutes over the three weeks of the event. The largest audience was during stage 16’s time trial, with 8.7 million tuning in to see Jonas Vingegaard take the win. The report further suggests – with little evidence – that these figures may be due to Netflix’s “Unchained” series. (It was the most watched show on Netflix in Denmark last week.) However, these numbers once again illustrate how easy it is to manipulate TV audience figures; the 40 million figure includes anyone who watched for more than one minute of the Tour, as well as those who simply saw TdF coverage as part of a broader news broadcast. And the five hours and 55 minutes would be equivalent to about 5% of the total broadcast time.
Despite all of the spectacle, excitement and melodrama in Europe, the Tour de France only draws a TV audience in the U.S. about the same size as a mid-week afternoon baseball game. Why is the interest not higher? We dig into this in detail in our six-part series of feature articles on VELO about boosting the popularity of the Tour de France in the United States. We look at (1) U.S.-specific issues; (2) the broader challenges of cycling's basic business model; (3) how to increase the exposure of the sport; (4) the impact of the Netflix "Unchained" series; (5) the need for better development programs and infrastructure; and finally, (6) the importance of bigger American stars.
Also, check out our “Explainer” series on VELO – with regard to racing tactics and strategies and race organization decisions at the Tour, where in Part 2, we dig into lead-out hysteria, waiting for the break to go, and the element of surprise. In Part 3, we analyze the difference between clever strategy and simple gambling, the art of breakaway “management,” and the futility of trying to understand strategy where perhaps none exists. Finally, in Part 4, we ask if sprinters should be penalized for the behavior of their lead-out men and discuss the difficulties around equitably neutralizing a race.
The Miguel Ángel López doping saga continued towards its inevitable conclusion this past week, with the UCI announcing that the 2022 Vuelta 4th place finisher would be hit with a provisional racing suspension, due to a potential anti-doping rule violation (ADRV). This stems from his connection to doctor Marcos Maynar, who was arrested last year in connection with drug trafficking and money laundering. It isn’t clear how long this provisional suspension will last, or how it will end up, but the UCI was likely eager to officially suspend López from racing since his “ban” from the WorldTour has been unofficial, with only his Astana team cutting ties. This had meant that López was still available to teams desperate for results at the upcoming Vuelta, and was still free to race – and dominate – pro/am events like the Tour of Colombia and Tour of the Gila. While this outcome is an unambiguously positive development, it raises the question of why it took the UCI almost a year to officially ban López, and why it allowed him to pummel up-and-comers in lower races in the meantime.
On the topic of delayed bans, the UCI also just announced that Bahrain-Victorious’ Filip Maciejuk would serve a 30-day suspension for his role in the mid-race crash at last April’s Tour of Flanders. While the ban seems fair, considering Maciejuk caused significant injury to his fellow riders while violating article 12.4.007 of the UCI regulations, it seems absurd that it has only been handed down now since the violation and punishment are fairly cut and dry. Maciejuk broke the rules by leaving the course (to ride on a bike path next to the road) and exposed his fellow competitors to a serious risk of injury as a result, so why did it take so long for the UCI to come up with and hand down this punishment?
While Tour de France Femmes overall coverage seemed well organized, there were varying degrees of success in the English-speaking broadcast booth, particularly on the first day. A criticism of women's cycling coverage is that there are too few women leading – not just supporting – the commentary, and often they don't get the same kind of opportunities for continuity and growth in their roles. While the NBC team on stage 1 held promise, Bob Roll and Phil Liggett’s unfamiliarity and lack of interaction with the women’s peloton seemed to interfere with the dialogue flow and crowded out former star rider Megan Guarnier’s contributions. That could have turned off viewer enthusiasm, but solid coverage from the established team of Hannah Walker and Anthony McCrossan from stage 2 through the finish more than made up for the hiccup. With undeniable momentum building up women’s pro racing, we hope to see more women leading in the broadcast booth in the seasons to come.
And in another example illustrating the yawning gap between television economics in cycling and other mainstream sports … nearly seven months before Super Bowl LVIII, CBS Sports has already sold more than 70% of the available time slots. Rates are reportedly averaging between $6 and $7 million for 30 seconds of ad time. Last year, Fox had sold 95% of available ads by September. Part of this is due to the fact that 82 out of the 100 most-watched television broadcasts last year were NFL football games. Meanwhile, it is almost pathetic to compare this to Peacock’s American feed during the Tour, where ad time frequently apparently went unsold altogether, with viewers staring at black screens saying that coverage would resume shortly – often for several minutes at a time – and where the spots that were sold involved seemingly bizarre advertisers like Southern New Hampshire University, and some kind of psychologically therapeutic Velcro body wrap for dogs.
And finally, for this week’s feel-good story, we refer you to a review of RAGBRAI – the annual spectacle and bike ride across the state of Iowa, which this year is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Some 60,000 people participated last week in the moving festival, which Sports Illustrated once called Woodstock on wheels. There aren’t winners or official times, and it’s mostly a big party with lots of beer, brats and pies – the rare event where you can gain 10 pounds while riding 500 miles. “Sports, like so much else, have become a business, and it seems as if every day, the joy gets sucked out just a little bit. And then, there’s RAGBRAI. It’s grassroots, it’s ridiculous, and it’s full of creativity. It’s everything we need more of in sports.”