In the Giro, the Crostis climb was taken out at the last moment. The reason was not the safety of the riders, as more than 300 trees were cut and barricades were put up to ensure that. Nope, the reason was that the team cars can’t go up that climb and that having just one support motorcycle per team was considered too little. Hence the concept was introduced that “the sporting value of the race was in danger” because a mechanical could have a big impact on the race.

Tell that to the guys who had to weld and forge their own parts back together if something broke in the formative years of cycling. Apparently in retrospect, there is no sporting value in those early races!

When you watch cycling nowadays, there are hundreds of cars driving like crazy to let 200 guys ride around. This is nuts. I see four major problems with all these cars:

1. It endangers the sporting value of the race (ha!) when you have the sprinters hang on the cars for dear life as they did up Etna.
2. It endangers the sporting value of the race (ha! ha!) when the combination of team cars, VIP cars, motorcycles and assorted other transportation regularly hinders the riders, especially on the bad roads of the classics and in the mountains. Many a breakaway attempt is foiled not by the other competitors but by a vehicle that is supposed to be a inert part of the race.
3. It’s plain dangerous as sports directors often drive like idiots. Most countries have passed laws that make it illegal to talk on a cell phone while driving. Many sports directors do that while at the same time talking into the team radio AND watching television. They seem to think they’re such great drivers and invincible, which makes matters only worse.
4. It kills any notion that cycling is an environmentally conscious sport (and cutting 300 trees for nothing doesn’t help).

You may have heard rumors about a Tour of California idea to putting a women’s time trial next to the men’s event, and making the prize purse dependent on how many men the women beat. You can read the gist of it in autofact’s blog.

I agree with the blog that if these rumors were true, they would – in my eyes – be a monumental miscalculation. I say in my eyes because at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter what I think. Any rider should decide for herself if she believes such an event is positive or negative for her and her sport. But to me the funny thing is that it would not only be a miscalculation of what women’s sport deserves, but also of the level that women’s cycling is at.

In the alleged proposal the bar is put so low (i.e. their expectation of the women’s performances are so low) that if for example Emma Pooley were to show up at this event, she alone would blow most of that prize purse out of the water. Two, three women would be enough to reach the maximum prize purse that they think may not even be reached with 10 riders!

It’d be funny if it wasn’t so sad. That said, I am fairly sure this is actually not a serious proposal within the organization. Instead either this year or next, there will be a full-fledged women’s race – maybe not the same format as the men’s race, but of the same level of excellence.

You know how the canary in the coal mine is an early indicator of the health of the environment? Twitter can act as a similar indicator.

A few weeks ago in an interview with Gavia at the podium cafe, I mentioned that while women’s cycling deserves to be on TV and women riders are right to be upset with the lack of support within the cycling structure to make that happen, it is also important to look inward at what people can do themselves, not just at what they would like others to do.

“You can’t say, on the one hand, no one wants to watch us,
but at the same time you’re not on twitter yourself to promote your sport.”

[The quote in the article is slightly different, not so easy to get all the nuances right in a free-flowing interview, for the interviewer or the interviewed]. And strangely, there are far fewer women riders on twitter (or facebook) than men, even though on average they probably have more interesting things to say.

So then a funny thing happened. First off, a few women pros tweeted me that they read the interview and are now on twitter. That’s great, I hope that trend continues, also inside Garmin-Cervelo. Secondly, a lot of people jumped on the band wagon saying they would totally watch women cycling, if only the UCI would make such broadcasts happen.

But here’s the rub; just the way I feel women pros should focus on what they CAN affect and effect (race their hearts out, spread the sport via social media, etc), the same goes for the fans. It’s easy to say what you would do if somebody else first did this or that, but at the same time most fans aren’t following women pros through the avenues that are available today.

For example, @yokoteute is one of the world’s best cyclists, but she only has 699 followers. Are her tweets any good? I don’t know, as I wasn’t following her either, I definitely recognize I have ways to go as well. She now has 700 followers. The biggest fan base I could find was @marianne_vos with almost 8,000 (it’s in Dutch but that’s a pretty good number).

Anyway, I started a list of tweeting cycling pros. But then I saw that somebody else has done a much, much better job so just ignore me and go here.

Let me know if you agree or disagree in the comments below or via Twitter (@gerardvroomen).

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I guess we should all be very happy in pro cycling-land. Finally we’ve found a topic that gets more press than doping: radios. I won’t add my point of view to the mix, but I would like to point out the misconceptions that are dominating the discussion and are preventing the sport from finding a good solution:

1. Riders are remote-controlled by the sports director in the car. There are certainly teams and riders where this applies to some degree, but in many teams it doesn’t, especially in the classics. There the team car is often miles behind, with a sports director watching a tiny TV with crappy reception. During the race, you need an Andreas Klier near the front of the peloton much more than a Jonathan Vaughters in the car. In this episode of Beyond The Peloton Klier explains his tactical role in the race and you can here him use the race radio – much more than the sports directors. Those that argue the sports director does nothing other than hand out water bottles are also molding the facts to support their position of course, it’s not so black and white. Fact is, the information from the car makes a difference, but it doesn’t completely alter the race.
2. Radios may have a bigger effect in sprint stages, where the peloton now often catches the breakaway with laser precision. However, those who think a radio ban will give the breakaway a bigger chance may be mistaken, the tactical adjustment from the sprinter teams would likely be to run less risk and shut down breakaways sooner, leading to a less interesting race.
3. The safety aspect is often misunderstood. Most teams have cars in front of the race, and they give information about dangerous situations to the team car which then parlays it to the riders. This is a function that could also be performed by a neutral entity, it fact one could argue that it is the duty of the race organizer and the sanctioning body (the federation) to provide this information, but at this time that simply is not the case to the extent needed. If a decision is made to take the radios away, then it should be coupled with an extremely strict liability for the race organizers and sanctioning body that the course be safe. Judging by the number of parked cars on the route this weekend, there is a long way to go there. Regardless of where you stand on the radio issue, it’s unfortunate that the decision to take the radios away was taken without taking the steps to safeguard safety in other ways.
4. The radio ban makes the races dangerous because the sports directors now have to make crazy maneuvers to talk to the riders. There is actually no rule written anywhere that sports directors have to drive like idiots. It is allowed to use common sense and realize that bike racing is not worth endangering anybody’s lives. I remember a situation last year at Paris-Roubaix (with radios) where one team’s service car drove away from the Arenberg forest at 100+ kmh on a road that was not even part of the course, while spectators leaving the forest on foot had to jump out of the way to save their lives. Bottomline, stupid driving behavior has little to do with radios, it is ingrained in this sport where the people driving cars (sports directors, soigneurs, journalists, etc) sometimes feel way more important than they really are in the grand scheme of things. A radio ban would certainly increase the number of opportunities they have to act stupidly, but it’s not the real cause. BTW, Maarten Ducrot wrote about this aspect much more eloquently than I, so if you read Dutch, check out his blog.
5. Maybe the biggest misconception is of a different kind, the idea that this is about race radios. This conflict is not about the radios, it’s about changes being made without proper input from those involved. Now, the teams and riders are not without fault here. The teams, organized in the AIGCP, have been too busy with in-fighting instead of presenting a united front. They also have been absent when the federation has made decisions in the past without proper input. For example, when the federation changed the technical rules governing bike design, they did so without input from the manufacturers. The AIGCP, represented at the crucial meeting by just one team, chose the UCI’s side (BTW, that team told me they did so not because of any high-minded conviction, but because they thought their bikes would pass the new rules so they saw an advantage). Same with the riders, they have been asked for their opinion by their “union”, the ACP, several times and never responded in great numbers. And now that it’s almost too late, they wake up.

I hope all AIGCP and ACP members understand that this is not about the radios, but rather about having a say in how this sport is run. I also hope the bike manufacturers’ organization joins the AIGCP and ACP, not necessarily with any opinion about the radio but to support the right to provide input. For me personally, I don’t like the radios, but I will support any movement in favor of radios if that’s what the majority wants, on the basis that it’s the bigger picture that counts. I hope that everybody in cycling, UCI, AIGCP, ACP race organizers and manufacturers will take some inspiration from Voltaire’s most famous quote (which ironically he never uttered and wasn’t “invented” until after his death): “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. It’s high time to leave the narrow interests behind.

As always, let me know what you think, either here in the comments section or to my Twitter account @gerardvroomen.

As regular readers will know (if in fact one can be a regular reader of an incredibly irregular blog), I can be a bit critical towards cycling from time to time. But I have to say there are also a lot of things moving in the right direction and many things have improved over time. Especially the riders (and in the end they make the sport) have benefitted greatly and will do so even more in the next few years. Here are a few of the bigger break-throughs:

Idea 6: More teams in the big races
Right now there is an enormous amount of pressure on the marginal teams, those fighting for the last spots in the Grand Tours and Classics. Instead of 22 teams of 9 riders or 25 teams of 8 riders, change to 30 teams of 5 riders. That way most teams know from the start of the season that they are in the races that matter, and there is less pressure on the riders to perform. This idea would also solve a bunch of other problems, in fact I think it could be at the core of a program that really boosts cycling, but we’ll leave that for later as it is a bit off topic.

Note: It would also help to select these teams for multiple years, so the future is secure and less pressure exists on performance.

Cedric Vasseur, former professional cyclist and president of the CPA (the professional cyclist union) from 2007-2009, contacted me about the anti-doping blog posts I have been writing. I asked him to put his thoughts in a guest blog, which he graciously did. I corrected a few typo/grammar issues, but the content below is his. Please let Cedric know your thoughts via the comments section below. I thank Cedric for coming forward with his thoughts.

Dear Gerard,

I read carefully your blog and your ideas for helping cycling to find back his real place in the society. I must admit that all of them are really interesting and could be part of a new anti doping program.

Before going further I first would like to tell you that Cycling is already on the right way. Since a while we are having wonderful races, a real battle between the riders who are showing more than ever their limits. In that way I think that all the work that has been done since the terrible 1998 Festina affair really is starting to pay off.

Still we are listening that this or that rider is coming with some revelations but most of the time it refers to the old past. Cycling does not have to make the mistake to believe that one day not a single rider will be tempted by doping because it is one of the most difficult sports existing and this is why education is really essential. We also need more professionalism inside some the teams because there are still some people who have no business being in our sport. Your ideas about salaries and pensions as well as big sanctions for cheaters are also legitimate.

We also should not forget that Cycling is a sport and for me Sport = Spectacle = Dream. I have the feeling that those last years our sport government forgot that. We must promote the sport, the efforts and the most important the RIDERS…. I came to Cycling because I wanted to imitate Bernard Hinault who was my hero. Today my little boy is having a lot of heroes in Football but he is watching cycling without a special feeling for a rider and that’s a big problem. Lots of sports have more money than cycling and I guess the athletes from those sports are also tempted to grow faster but the last positive test in the Football World Cup for instance was in 1994….. I think those sports are a lot more organized than ours and we have to follow their example. I mean with all the doping problems there were in cycling it can’t only come from the riders, the system must be responsible.

So first of all, let’s try to organize a more federative system than the individualist one we are having still right now. 70% of the budget of a football club is coming from TV rights, 18 % from sponsors and around 12% from spectators.
In cycling more than 80% comes from sponsors.. When we will be able to go into such a communal system it will change a lot the mentalities. Let’s work on it. Money generated by cycling must be redistribute to all the stakeholders otherwise it is a jungle. Then, we also need an evaluation commission. That commission will check all the races and the performances. There for sure are some inhuman victories like Landis in Morzine (I finished 52min13s after him) or others cannot least for a long time. But for that you need people who know cycling and can appreciate it……

The cleaner cycling is, the fewer riders are tempted by doping. That we must put in our mind! A career is short and most of the riders are signing 1 or 2 year contracts. Again, in football those contracts are done for 3 to 5 years….Conclusion…

Finally I want to congratulate you for the new Tour de France jersey. Really nice. Cervelo TestTeam is definitely bringing cycling a new breath…. Sad that I am almost 40….–)))

Kind Regards,

Cédric.

Idea 5: Salaries & pensions
This may provide the biggest break-through but also meet the most resistance. As with all of the previous ideas, it could work in any sport, it’s not cycling-specific.

Think about the guy who dedicates himself to his sport for a decade or two, struggling to make a living, only to find out that he competed against cheats. The lost prize money, salary, his economic loss would be staggering, never mind his sportive loss. Contrast that with somebody who has made millions per year for many years, then buys off prosecution for a few bucks or by crying in Congress. He lives like a king until the end of time.

So I would suggest a change in salaries. Just like now, a rider can get any level of financial compensation. But we cap the amount that is actually paid out immediately to a certain amount, say 250,000 Euro/300,000 USD per year. Anything above that will go into the sport’s athlete pension fund. As soon as the athlete retires, he will get a pension out of that fund which is related to the amount he put in (the compensation he didn’t get each year). The pension will last his whole life, or until such moment when he is caught cheating through testing (during his career or retro-actively). In that case, he forfeits further pension payments and instead his pension money is redistributed among the honest athletes who are still in the fund. It has several benefits:

Obviously there could be many refinements (increasing salaries as the athlete gets older, etc), but you get the idea. And don’t say it won’t work because teams will make side deals and image contracts and whatever. If a team is caught circumventing this rule, it is avoiding an anti-doping effort. Teams can’t afford to take that risk (especially since testing for financial tricks is much easier than for doping products). I know there are hundreds of reasons why it wouldn’t work, but why not think about the reasons it will work.

Idea 4: Education
I once asked a group of riders: “Why does a sponsor pay you money?” It was quite difficult to get an answer. My next question was” “Why does a sponsor STOP paying you money?” Also not easy. This to me is incredible, how can you not know why you are getting paid to do something, and why it may stop? I don’t blame them, I blame management (see idea 3).

So at the first Cervelo TestTeam meeting, this was a big topic of education. The whole story is a bit long, but the crux is that in cycling, winning is not that important. That doesn’t just apply to a team like Cervelo TestTeam which also focuses on other things like product development and fan access, it applies to all teams. Here’s the proof: in most sports, the top team has a budget roughly 10 times bigger than the smallest team in the league . For example, Manchester United’s budget is around 10x that of the bottom of the premier league (Brad Wiggins would argue that’s Wigan). North American sports with a salary cap are obviously a bit different.

In cycling, the delta between the biggest team and team #20 is around 3:1, not 10:1. The reason is that in most sports like soccer, being #20 means you get very little exposure – only if you play #1 and even then you don’t get nearly the exposure of the #1. In cycling, as long as you get into the big races like the Tour, you get exposure. Maybe you don’t contend for the GC, but there will be stages to get into the breakaway, or you fight for the polka dot jersey, or you take a sprint victory. There is exposure to be had for everybody, as long as you get invited. Henceforth, winning isn’t that important, getting invited is, and while there are of course athletic considerations that determine the invites, having the right ethical stance also goes a long way.

With winning being less important than in other sports (remember the 3:1) , why are cycling teams focused so much (and often exclusively) on winning? It doesn’t make sense. So focus on the fans, on product development, on whatever your heart desires. Also on winning, but not at all costs, and hence not at the cost of cheating, as that might just be the one thing that keeps you OUT of the big races.

You can be darn sure Cervelo TestTeam riders know why sponsors are involved in our team.

Idea 3: Professional management
As long as we do not have professional management at all levels of this sport, we’ll be spinning our wheels and the sport will never reach its full potential. We have a long way to go in this regard, but things are slowly improving with some new teams entering the peloton (I’m not saying all the old teams are bad).

I don’t know if the Garmin, Sky or Cervelo model is the future, they are all different and time will tell, but at least new ideas have a chance now and other teams will follow. Ex-riders have a place in the management of teams, but they are way, way over-represented right now.

Think about it this way; cycling teams are a service industry with three types of customers:

1. Fans (create a spectacle that is worth following)
2. Sponsors (assist them to reach their objectives in the sport)
3. Riders (support the riders to race successfully)

Name one other industry where the main human resources strategy is to hire customers?