First among equals

Serramenti PVC Diquigiovanni–Androni Giocattoli. To the uninitiated it might sound more like the midfield spine of some legendary European Cup-winning football team from the 1960s or 1970s but it was the name under which Gianni Savio’s UCI ProTeam raced in the 2008 and 2009 seasons.

Oh, how we chuckle at “Swiss Toni” and his wheeling and dealing which has not only created some of the busiest jerseys in the men’s peloton but – more importantly – has kept his popular second division team running for the last 15 years.

This past week, I have been reminded of that particularly wordy incarnation of Savio’s squad for a couple of reasons. The first is that I’m reading Kathryn Bertine’s “Stand: A Memoir on Activism. A Manual for Progress” which, among other things, highlights the many disparities between men’s and women’s cycling, from the racing itself to the gaping gender pay chasm and attitudes in officialdom ranging from ignorance to blatant sexism. The second is Isabel Best’s CyclingNews article “Racing below the breadline: The women’s cycling omerta” which outlines the extent of the financial disparity but also tells the story of Olympic silver medallist and one-time superstar of women’s racing, Rebecca Twigg. For her there was no glorious retirement after she left the sport in 1997, no post-career development academy, lucrative media contracts or line of haut couture sportswear bearing her name. Within 2 decades of stepping off the bike, Twigg was homeless.

Any number of solutions have been bandied about as to how to redress the inequalities between the men’s and women’s sport. One of these – a minimum wage for women – was only instituted last season, almost a decade after the then UCI president Pat McQuaid declared in 2011 that women’s cycling “[hadn’t] developed enough” to justify such a wild idea. If only he’d been in some sort of position to help make that happen.

Another frequent suggestion is compelling all men’s UCI World Tour teams to run a comparable women’s team. Of the present men’s peloton, only Movistar, Jumbo-Visma, BikeExchange, DSM, Trek-Segafredo and FDJ run parallel teams for women.

To be fair to the UCI, equal prize money is on offer for both men’s and women’s World Championships (if you overlook the fact that there is no U23 category for women) but there remains huge disparity between the minimum prize pots at World Tour and other races.

To any reasonable person, mandatory and equal minimums are just common sense but, as any seasoned fan or almost any sport knows, rarely does common sense factor in decision making by The Powers That Be. Cycling’s precarious and outdated business model also lends itself to even the most common-sense idea becoming mired in – well – mire.

So what does any of this have to do with Gianni Savio? The biggest single fiscal problem in cycling is the near-total reliance of teams upon outside investment– sponsorship. A sponsor expects a return on that investment, which at its simplest means having their name on jerseys, particularly jerseys at the front of the peloton and on podiums. Their names on yellow or maybe occasionally pink jerseys is also worth paying for (no offence, Vuelta a España!). A sponsor’s investment is also - mainly – finite and based on their expected return. So demanding that teams run 2 squads means that a sponsor either doubles their investment or must be prepared to see that investment – and perhaps the return upon it - diluted.

That finiteness (finity?) of investment also applies to race organisers and their prize pots.

So is the obvious solution to simply find more sponsors? Assuming that wider problems such as the thorny issue of broadcasting rights and revenues are unlikely to be addressed any time soon, sponsorship is likely to remain the single biggest source of income for both men’s and women’s teams. The choice faced by teams is to either of find a sugar mummy or daddy who has the means to fund squads capable, say, of winning a grand tour or to find multiple investors happy to cough up and simply battle it out for stage victories.

Perhaps instead cycling as a whole needs to accept that even at the highest level jerseys may have to get a little busier for both men’s and women’s teams (careful there, Canyon-SRAM!) to sustain the sport. Instead of sneering under collective breath at the Gianni Savio approach, maybe it’s time to embrace it for the benefit of all.

But here’s a thing: despite the myriad issues it still faces, women’s cycling is on the rise, as is the demand for coverage. The standard of racing and the excitement it provides are at the very least on a par with the men’s peloton, although the comparison is hardly exact. The personalities who ride their bikes week in, week out are also, arguably, more vibrant than most of their sponsor-friendly, big-box-ticking Y-chromosomed counterparts.

As women’s cycling continues to build momentum, men’s cycling may just end up needing to look a little more lively. The sport has basked in the privilege of the simple fact that it has existed at a high level for 120 years. While it may take some radical solutions to truly address the economic and opportunity gaps that exist between each genders’ sport, the future might depend not so much on how much investors are prepared to put in to women’s cycling, but rather how much men’s cycling may be prepared to lose.

De Stig

“Most crashes result in broken collarbones, and this is another consequence.” – Thomas De Gendt

As openings to cycling films go, this almost borders on the excruciating. The Lotto-Soudal team are gathered around the dinner table in Toulouse after Caleb Ewan has edged out Dylan Groenewegen in the bunch sprint to claim victory on Stage 11 of the 2019 Tour de France. Enter an ungainly figure, tall and lithe but with obvious impairments both to his frame and his speech. Yet his grin is expansive while those of his team mates are fixed and awkward. The conversation is stilted, not because of his impairments but because, to a professional cyclist, he is an apparition. He is their worst fears made flesh; the ghost of Christmases yet to come.  “He’s just like he was before”, assures directeur Herman Frison but maybe even he knows his words are slightly hollow.

The Spring of 2016 was wretched for cycling and for Belgium in particular. Wanty–Groupe Gobert rider Antoine Demoitié made his World Tour debut at E3 Harelbeke but died little more than 48 hours later after a race moto hit him as he lay following a crash at Gent-Wevelgem. More bad news was to follow. The day before, Daan Myngheer had suffered a heart attack during a stage of the Criterium International and was immediately rushed to hospital. Mere hours after Demotié’s death, the 22 year-old Roubaix Lille Metropole rider passed away in hospital on Corsica.  Exactly two months later, another cruel twist of fate unfolded.

Some 65km into stage 3 of the Tour of Belgium the road narrowed, causing 2 overtaking race motorbikes to collide and the ensuing crash pitching both machines into the bunch, taking out no fewer than 19 riders. Stig Broeckx – already recovering from a broken collarbone suffered in an accident involving a race motorbike at Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne mere weeks previously - was one of 11 riders taken to hospital as the stage was being cancelled. Unconscious, Stig Broecks was clearly suffering another consequence.

De Stig isn’t a tale of mere recovery from injury. Broeckx would spend the next 6 months in a coma, having suffered 2 separate bleeds on his brain as well as a fractured eye socket. As we learn, he had been a whisker away from being clinically brain dead and for much of those 6 months “coma” was just a nicer term than “vegetative state”.  He had no recollection of much of his professional career or his relationship with his girlfriend. He was mystified (but delighted) when friends and team mates came to visit him in hospital as he began to recover – “you came for me?” 

This is the story beyond the hashtags. When the social media #fightforstig had become the purpose only of his family, friends and a select band of professionals and the #neverforget brigade #alreadyhad, De Stig follows Broeckx the better part of 3 years down the line, taking uncertain steps on the long road to some semblance of recovery and independence. As all-consuming and (to the outsider) selfish the lifestyle of a professional cyclist is, the film serves to underline the cast of dozens who were no less consumed picking up the pieces: from the neurosurgeons who took care of him immediately to the physios who provided specialist rehabilitation; from the coaches with whom we see him working to his parents whose own nightmares must surely have seemed to be coming true.

Spoiler alert, De Stig is essentially the opposite of - say - Chris Froome’s well-documented return from a potentially career-ending/life-altering crash. There were no Instagram thumbs-up while Broeckx firstly clung on for life and then battled to move, to walk and to speak again. There will be no speculation as to whether he’ll ever be as good as he was before the accident and yet it is a story of relentless positivity and a desire to regain fitness and independence. Yes “put me back on the bike” is perhaps a cliché and we do see him progress from the turbo trainer to a tricycle (“that’s embarrassing sometimes”) to a farm bike and then on to a road bike but a Hollywood ending isn’t on the horizon. That said, perhaps the only real moment of pathos in film is when he admits that the flickering dream of racing again on two wheels again is just that.

But while tragedy is the catalyst for De Stig, it is not the theme. If anything, Broeckx’s relentless positivity is what shines through even when that positivity may not be enough. There is joy in simple triumphs - annunciating words properly, beating the clock pushing a weighted sled in the gym and - emotionally - completing a charity walk in aid of his rehabilitation centre. There is joy also in Stig’s smile and optimism.

If a Hollywood ending isn’t the film’s conclusion then perhaps it’s a sense of the ending of a chapter and a beginning of another. You can find out what Stig’s up to now by checking out CyclingTips but before you do, make sure you watch his story - or at least what was his story over the last 4 years.

De Stig is presented by CyclingTips and available to rent or buy on Vimeo.

La Course en Tete?

It wasn’t that long ago that we held our breath. Chloe Dygert is on her way seemingly to certain glory in the UCI World Individual Time Trial championship race at Imola, stretched out on the aero bars and leaning into a right-hand bend. Suddenly, the front wheel bobbles and she is now fighting to recover the bucking bronco that her Felt bike has become, squirming and shuddering into a tank-slapper as the tyre momentarily gains and then loses traction over and over again. The bike keeps an inexorable course towards the barriers on the outside of the turn, agonisingly past the safety padding before the inevitable collision with cold exposed steel. The 23 year-old American champion is pitched upwards and over the barrier with her bike and down the embankment on the other side.

We’ve seen this already, just a few short weeks before when Remco Evenepoel suffered a similar fate, pitched down a ravine after colliding with a section of exposed wall at the Tour of Lombardy. Once again, we hope for the best while fearing the worst.

Remarkably, mere hours after her crash and surgery to repair the 80 percent laceration suffered by her left leg in the accident, she was sharing pictures on social media of the hideous open wound and how her first thoughts upon sitting up from the crash were “can I still win?”.

Chloe Dygert was a hero for about a week.  On a day when her compatriot Quinn Simmons incurred the wrath of Twitter (and subsequently his team, Trek-Segafredo) by sharing some ill-advised right-wing comments on social media, including a black hand symbol as part of a reply to an anti-Trump rant by Dutch journalist Jose Been on Twitter, Dygert was exposed as “a massive Trumper” after – wait for it - liking tweets by the (now) outgoing President of the USA as well as some other social media posts by right-leaning commentators and platforms.  To some extent these indiscretions were overshadowed by the Simmons controversy and his subsequent benching by his team, but on social media your sins, perceived or otherwise, have a habit of catching you up.

Last Tuesday, the cycling world awoke to the announcement that Dygert would be joining Canyon/SRAM on a four-year contract, her first with a Women’s World Tour team and also her first outside the USA. Canyon SRAM is the big time, with names such as Tiffany Cromwell, Kasia Niewadoma, Pauline Ferrand-Prevot and Dygert’s compatriot Alexis Ryan on their books. Toto, we’re not in Indiana any more.

It didn’t take long for the murmurs of discontent to begin. It began with “I’ll never buy a Canyon” or some comments about Trump but each post by the team itself or Canyon Bikes or even sponsors Rapha drew comments ranging from the snide to the incandescent as their new signing was branded variously racist, transphobic, homophobic or any number of prejudices linked to race, gender and sexuality.  On Saturday, the rider issued a statement via her Instagram account stating:

"Cycling should be for everyone regardless of color, gender, sexuality or background. Like Canyon/SRAM Racing, I am committed to promoting diversity, inclusion and equality in cycling and our wider communities.

"I apologize to those who felt offended or hurt by my conduct on social media.

“I am committed to keep learning and growing as an athlete and a person."

It’s already clear that this isn’t enough for many but my point here is Was Any Of This Necessary?  I’d have seen the point had Dygert been actively promoting a right-wing or racist agenda or posting stuff about the Proud Boys or #MAGA or whatever, but I am deeply uncomfortable with the notion of singling out a young athlete for the apparent crime of liking some posts for reasons known only to her. It is little more than thought policing.

We love professional cyclists for being cyclists and, as unpalatable as it may be, their world view may occasionally differ from ours. And that’s okay; I think we call it “democracy” or something. Despite losing the 2020 US presidential election, more than 70 million Americans voted for Donald Trump which was actually more than the number who elected him in 2016. Now, this asks some serious questions about American society as a whole, but are all Trump voters automatically hideous racists? Did we never consider that there was a chance that some of those voters may be professional cyclists? 

My inference from this whole episode is that while we want our cycling heroes to be multi-dimensional, well-formed characters with views on things beyond cycling, we also want them to think like us and subscribe to our beliefs and struggle to deal with the reality that our cycling heroes wear clay Sidis.

We criticise the UCI for taking cycling to China, the UAE and other authoritarian states, and rightly so. We just don’t need to use social media to bring an authoritarian state to cycling.

Annemiek Inherits the Earth

The descent is fast and the right-hand bend tightens towards the exit.  The road surface is smooth but is edged by drainage gutters some 18 inches deep which are in turn lined by taller exposed concrete kerbs.  As the cavalcade of support vehicles comes through for the final time in this Olympic road race, the distinctive chirp of a car tyre struggling to stay in contact with the road surface can be heard above the noise of engines and the distant thrum of the TV helicopters from the lead commissionaire car. 

The race leader in the distinctive Oranje colours of the Dutch national team hugs the inside of the turn, left leg straight, pushing down on the pedal, her right knee bent and pointing into the apex. As the bend tightens, the bike’s course drifts inexorably to the outside.  The rider seeks to correct the drift, but the back wheel locks briefly and lurches as the rider grabs handfuls of brake. It’s too late. The bike pitches on the axis of its front wheel, launching the rider over the bars inevitably and sickeningly end-over-end into the ditch and the waiting kerbs.

The figure of Annemiek van Vleuten lies over the kerbstone, almost in a loose recovery position. Her head is down, pointing back towards the road protected by her white helmet and her right arm bent instinctively across her face. There is no movement or moan or plaintive cry of pain or for help.  Silence.

Many of us watching that 2016 Olympic Women’s Road Race feared the worst but remarkably Annemiek van Vleuten suffered “only” 3 lumbar spinal fractures as well as a severe concussion following her brush with the asphalt and aggregates of the Vista Chinesa.  Perhaps even more remarkably she was back racing – and winning – barely a month later taking 2 stages, GC and the mountains classification at the Lotto Belgium Tour.

Four years on, the Mitchelon-Scott rider is arguably in the form of her life. She remains unbeaten since winning the World Championship in a 2019 season that also saw her win Strade Bianche, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, all 3 classifications at the Giro Rosa and a fourth Dutch National Time Trial Championship.

In this COVID-disrupted season which she kicked off with a win at Het Nieuwsblad in February, she has returned from lockdown with 3 wins in Spain and, this past weekend, rode a perfectly-timed race to take her second Strade Bianche. 

And yet, van Vleuten is not necessarily a name that springs most readily to mind when you mention Dutch women’s cycling.  That honour, of course, goes to Marianne Vos.  Vos is some 4 years van Vleuten’s junior and despite injury in recent seasons and the dominance of past years gone, the shadow of probably the greatest women rider of all time is cast long.

Perhaps van Vleuten’s earlier palmares makes it easy to glibly consider her more of a time trial specialist (she is after all a double World ITT Champion) but while the stars in the Vos constellation may be burning a little less brighter these days, you can’t help get the impression that, at the age of 37, Annemiek van Vleuten’s stellar evolution is just moving into its main sequence.

Nineteen Ninety and All That

Eurosport is filling its pre-scheduled Tour de France time by celebrating the success of British winners and, as I type, is showing the iconic stages in Bradley Wiggins’ 2012 victory.  The trouble is that, with the exception perhaps of the La Plache des Belles Filles (won by that Chris Froome kid) any maybe the final time trial in Chartres, there was nothing terribly iconic about the racing itself.  After lauding a British rider in the maillot jaune, the excitement was somewhat dampened by Team Sky’s subsequent project management approach to bike racing and the daily “another box ticked” soundbites from the race leader. As a British cycling fan, it was certainly thrilling at the history being made but the racing was less so as Wiggins’ team defended the race lead while the likes of Vincenzo Nibali, Cadel Evans and Jurgen Van den Broeck hurled themselves at the Sky edifice.  Like a good many people, I celebrated that first British victory, but taking away the historic significance of the win, you can’t watch too many Tours like that.

Lazily flicking through an old copy of Rouleur recently, I happened upon Andy McGrath’s piece on Greg Lemond (now available in Lockdown-friendly podcast form too).  This in turn reminded me to buy Guy Andrews’ gorgeous “Yellow Jersey Racer” about the former World Champion and the Tour’s only (recognised) American winner.  Another box ticked.  But thinking about Lemond, the images that immediately sprung to mind were of him holding hands with Bernard Hinault atop Alpe d’Huez in 1986 and that jubilant, if slightly disbelieving, grin on the Champs Elysees in 1989.  What about his third win?  When was that again?

Lemond’s third Tour victory is his least-celebrated, largely it seems because he didn’t win any stages, neither road nor time trial.  He wore the Yellow Jersey for but a single day – the one that really counts, mind. It sounds dull, when you say it like that. But the story of Lemond’s hat-trick isn’t one of a healthy lead gained early in the race and then clung onto for the next fortnight.  The story of Lemond’s 1990 win is exactly the opposite: an unlikely and significant deficit lost by almost all of the GC contenders on Stage 1 (following the previous day’s Prologue) and a subsequent pursuit across the Alps and Pyrenees.  If, like me, 1990 is slightly before your cycling time, it’s most definitely worth a search of YouTube to see what by today’s standards would be the unusual sight of a team leader driving the troops to simultaneously take time from his quarry while also putting time into his rivals. Boring it is not.

So with me itching to get back to my blogging ways (oh, and thank you Orla and Richard from the Cycling Podcast for inspiring that thought!) and there being no new cycling about which to blog, I thought I’d kick things off on the 30th anniversary of a race that nobody seems to talk about. 

Bon appetit!

Gary