The Etoile de Bessèges finished on Sunday with a win by Kévin Vauquelin. The big story though was race safety and the withdrawal of nine of the 20 teams in the race. Are small races run by volunteers doomed?
History
The race started in the 1970s thanks to Roland Fangille. It’s taken place the week after the French season-opening GP La Marseillaise and worked because of this, close to Marseille and benefitting from the Mediterranean climate. No guarantee but most of the peloton from France and Belgium didn’t fly to training camps until recently.
Fangille died aged 81 in 2020. His daughter Claudine has taken over the race, along with her daughter Tiphany and her husband Romain Le Roux (an ex-pro, they met at the race) and with the support of the local Bessèges cycling club. They’re all volunteers and it’s an example of what we can call a grass roots race or a bottom-up event.
Rules
Traffic on the course last week wasn’t a surprise, scenes of the peloton confronting parked vehicles were déjà vu. Surprisingly there are not many UCI rules, guidelines assert the principle to stop all non-race traffic, in the rulebook itself there’s the threat of a penalty ex post for organisers if the “race route not entirely closed and road traffic not stopped on the route”. Stopping vehicles doesn’t solve everything, Bessèges’ use of a rolling road closure just saw obstruction by parked vehicles, especially dangerous when the peloton is approaching the finish at speed.
Specifics
This frustrated several teams and riders. They told the organisers if there was another incident they’d quit, this is all explained by reporter Daniel Benson. Alas the next day one driver who had nothing to do with the race ended up inside the convoy, pulling out from a sideroad in a village to find themselves in front of the peloton soon after the start of the stage; then a driver was stopped on a side road by police outriders but once the breakaway had passed by the motorist decided to continue… for the peloton to meet it head-on. The final straw.
Beyond the specifics
Anyway point here isn’t an inquest to this single incident and the chain of events behind it. Instead we should observe the more general feeling of insecurity and how the peloton is resorting to direct action. See the Challenge Majorca recently where one day’s racing was abandoned after riders decided to stop. Or go back a few races more to the Tre Valli Varesine last October when the peloton decided to stop mid-race too.
Protest
A starting principle here is the peloton is better than judging the risks than a blogger so the decision to stop belongs to the racers. It’s understandable as if an organiser promises to improve the situation only for things to go wrong then there’s bound to be a breakdown in trust. Who wants to barrel around a next corner or speed into a junction if the organiser can’t be trusted?
Only stopping mid-race is problematic, it highlights a dysfunctional environment where riders’ only power is to stop. There’s an asymmetry here as the cost of stopping is a day’s lost racing for riders (and spectators) but for the event it can be existential. This isn’t for the riders to solve though, it’s on the UCI and organisers but with the ideal end result where riders don’t abandon but are ready for some kind of compromise outcome.
Brittle model
To explain the threat, small races don’t sell TV rights. They pay to have the event filmed and the going rate is typically €50,000 per day but the idea is this brings in sponsors who get visibility, the coverage appeals to more teams and so creates a virtuous cycle. This can work in reverse as if there’s a spontaneous cancellation then the TV producers will still bill but the sponsors won’t pay and nor may host towns and so the event is done for.
Ideally rather than a stoppage mid-afternoon there could be some kind of safety plan with the racing moved to a finishing circuit with closed roads so that the day’s sport can reach some conclusion and the TV broadcast goes out. Even a yellow card system where one dubious incident sees the organiser warned; another and no debate, a “Plan B” that’s even in the roadbook so it’s known about gets activated and the race heads for a finishing circuit that can be secured. Like many safety suggestions it sounds sensible but a lot easier typed than done, the logistics of moving the peloton to this finish ensuring the circuit is safe are hard.
Safer, not safety?
All this comes with an increasing focus on rider safety. But only so far, as suggested before the sport wants to reduce incidence and harm but doesn’t want to prod too hard here. A genuine safety culture could neutralise descents but the sport doesn’t want to confront this, nor other related measures. Instead it’s more about mitigating incidence and harm. It’s on riders to do a 100km/h descent but with the assumption that after a blind bend there’s no parked car; or when the bunch is doing 60km/h with 10km there shouldn’t be obstacles in the road like parked vehicles.
Political capital
A specific solution for Bessèges could be to rename the race. It’s really become a tour of the Gard department and rebranding it as such could bring in more political support. But how much remains to be seen, it’s easy to type a suggestion. Actually getting politicians on board is much harder, and we’ve not talked about the cuts to French local government that are coming so good luck getting more funding.
More resources could help, more police, more road closures. Or if this isn’t possible then a different route. Or a circuit. Or no race… and this is the ultimate concern because if small organisations lack the clout to get backing like sufficient police resources, closed roads and cash to meet raised requirements then they’re done for and this applies to many races far from Bessèges. Many races have quietly vanished but this trend looks set to accelerate.
Conclusion
A lot of pro cycling relies on amateur race organisers. This has long been part of the sport’s charm with champions of the day going to take part in small races; you won’t see Lionel Messi or Erling Haaland on a village football pitch but you can see cyclists come to town. This works when it’s amateur in the noble sense with passionate people devoting time to make events happen, but at the risk of not being adequately resourced and shoe-string operations.
If the riders feel unsafe and want to stop, that’s their own decision and understandable. But the sport needs to come up with a better response whether stricter guidelines about traffic so organisers can’t tolerate one parked car in the way or dialogue so it’s not as binary as race or stop. While a lot has rightly been made of the brittle finances of teams at the mercy of losing a sponsor, swathes of the calendar are endangered too and at this rate it’s not just the Etoile de Bessèges that is fading.
The actions by riders and managers at the recent Etoile de Bessèges raise’s many serious questions about the future of the sport. Whilst rider safety is of paramount concern, so is the future of many of these smaller races all over Europe. Securing sponsorship is probably facing its most challenging period since the sport became established. The rising cost of police assistance has become a major financial consideration. I don’t have a solution, but one needs to be found. Rather than fining organisers, the UCI needs to step in and try and help hard pressed organizers find an agreeable and productive way forward.
Failure to do so could result in the rapid loss of many minor but important events and their hard pressed organisers.
As mentioned above the UCI rulebook doesn’t actually have that much on road closures, as if it’s assumed rather than needing pages of definitions. But didn’t mention above that the pentalty for “race route not entirely closed and road traffic not stopped on the route” starts at 10,000 Swiss Francs (about €10k) so it is a steep penalty for a small race but loose change for one of the three big ones. The UCI’s waded in with a press release so it’ll be interesting to see the response as there’s now some kind of duty on them to follow up.
A fine of 10K may be enough to finish the race organisation off for these small races. I doubt it would make much sense for the sport to actually levy the fine in most cases.
Absolutely so. Organisers are already losing their personal money to run these races, imagine the impact of being asked some further 10K… They’ll just quit. Which maybe is what should actually happen at this point, but then it’s the sport as a whole which will need to find an alternative way to keep “functioning” at every level.
Two points come to mind: First, I am surprised that cars on the courses are not more common given the prevalence of rolling closures (vs. full closures) and the sheer number of vehicles in close proximity (Schachmann’s disasterous encounter with a vehicle exiting a driveway in the 22 Lombardia comes to mind).
Second, I’ve not yet seen any coverage in relation to this event about the relationship between UCI points/the relegation battle and the degree to which teams prioritize rider safety. It strikes me that the WT teams that pulled out are all safe from relegation whereas many of the smaller major teams that stayed (Arkea, Cofidis, Lotto)are in strong to desperate need of points. There may be too little in this to draw strong conclusions regarding causation, but it’s something to consider and to pay attention to going forward. With the way smaller races are going with the struggle for financial resources and volunteers, safety issues are likely to become more prevalent. At the same time, with the consequences of relegation/promotion being so massive, teams have never had more incentive to get results. Even if that means compromising on safety.
Your second point is notable. There is a sense of a change in the power relationship, once teams/riders really needed a race and now the races really need teams but some teams can leave although it’s maybe risky to read too much into it; it could be as much down to personal relationships with the organisers.
Also things were confused in the moment. Lotto stayed – De Lie won the stage after most teams left – but someevents on the day were also down to riders being cold from waiting in the rain. It was also mentioned during the TV broadcast that something got lost in translation for the Tietma Rockets team and they pulled out by accident, but they later denied this (although they might have to say this to avoid turning this side story into a comedy as they’re supposed to be a French team now but don’t have many French speakers etc).
Going back to this year’s predictions for 2025 post, one was that star riders will race less and we’ll whole teams not worried by relegation do this as well; and the reverse too where some teams will race a lot in a bid to score.
This is a great point Max Luft and something I’d not considered in all the coverage.
Glad INRNG came back also. Thank you and thank you for an excellent article.
I’ve loathed this points system from the start so will happily hoover up any argument that could intimate the UCI is encouraging teams to put riders in harms way during a desperate battle against relegation – but am aware it’s far more complicated than that.
Although were this a promotion and relegation system that caught fans interest and felt like it really mattered I’d be fully behind it – but as with most things in professional cycling almost all else fades under the overpowering light of the Tour De France and we live in perpetual merry-go-around of meaningless races, put on by struggling race organisers, entered by teams struggling to stay afloat and raced by riders putting themselves in harms way for little reward. Nothing will ever change but all these issues, even if tough to solve, come back to the same argument of a broken structure in professional riding that manages to be both not as safe as it should be while also not as entertaining as it could be. Quite feat for an brilliant sport.
I’m aware many want to keep cycling exactly as it is but I’m fairly convinced now that we see regular in race and training deaths along with fading interest in some races that if the people who love cycling don’t find a way to move with the times someone else will and we’ll all be unhappy with the outcome.
But I guess someone will always be unhappy and right now that’s me – gutted by recent training deaths along with what feels like an increase in racing deaths and I don’t like accepting that we just have to put up with it when many other sports have found ways to get safer over time.
The photo of the truck heading straight toward the peloton was chilling.
I’m 100% with you regarding the point system. It doesn’t make sense to use a relegation/promotion system in a sport where revenues are driven entirely by sponsorships and moving up or down might literally be the difference between a team’s life and death. This is not a traditional major-league sport like football with gate and media revenue that will only vary so much with a team’s status. In cycling, a sponsor can decide to leave if a team ends up falling out of the WT and that can be that.
“…as with most things in professional cycling almost all else fades under the overpowering light of the Tour De France and we live in perpetual merry-go-around of meaningless races, put on by struggling race organisers, entered by teams struggling to stay afloat and raced by riders putting themselves in harms way for little reward.”
As Anon below (on the opposite side of the field), oversimplifying big times…
Are you so sure there’s no middle ground between the sceneries you depict above? Some of the races which made the Best 2025 Moments selection by inrng aren’t even organised by ASO.
But let’s also leave aside Flanders Classics and RCS.
Smaller organisers which are still holding beautiful and safe faces, say GS Emilia, are still out there doing the hard work and… making it work from pretty much every POV. Same for, say, Tour of Alps or Volta a Catalunya.
But one aspect of the point system is exactly, that it addresses the balance between the races.
Your complaint is, that the only race, that has real meaning beyond „we race it, because that is what we do: racing races“ is the Tour de France. And you are right. No rider gets hired to win the Giro or any of the other races. But riders get hired to win the Tour. No sponsor comes in for Roubaix or Paris-Tours. But they do for the Tour de France (and btw to think that this is „the fault“ of the Tour de France, like some do (I don’t mean you with that) is a bit moronic).
Giving points to races means, that teams MUST consider them. In other words: they become meaningful this way. It changes the balance: Riders MUST now be hired to race these races. They HAVE now to be taken into serious consideration for the season. Not just „we race them, because it is what we do: racing races“.
So I find it strange, that you are so set against the Point-system, when at the same time you say the Tour de France is too big and too meaningful. Especially as a point system to put the other races in context with the Tour de France is the only thing I can think of, that might help in this regard.
Generally agreed with the theoretical points, but as you don’t follow cycling outside TDF you might have not noticed that several among the Big 4-5-6 athletes in current cycling aren’t being hired at all to win the TDF. They’re head and shoulders above the rest in sporting terms, but as you refer to hiring I’ll also hint at their wage. Quite surely they’re not hiring for the TDF, say, Mathieu van der Poel (4th most paid athlete in the sport), plus Roglic (2nd most paid) for the last three seasons. The most paid athlete, Pogacar, always has the TDF in his bucket list, but he put it at stake – actually losing it or potentially diminishing his chances – in order to race other competitions. As for Evenepoel and Van Aert: although in different ways, the TDF is indeed valued much both by them and their teams, but saying “they’re being hired to win the Tour” is plain wrong, they both would be hired whatever their seasonal objectives – as proved not only by past events but also, say, by WVA’s contract, or by Remco’s decision to stay in a team where the stage race support looks a bit lacking, to say the least.
Essentially, you could say the above only about Vingegaard.
As a mere curiosity, even the 7th most paid athlete during the last couple of seasons, i.e. Tom Pidcock was quite surely *not* being “hired to win the Tour”.
The above is a contingent situation and I’d agree with your general point, yet it’s worth noting it as a peculiar sign of the specific time we’re living in. And to be exact, although the TDF is the most important race for most teams, when you pose the question in terms of “what an athlete is hired for”, your argument doesn’t hold, as a lot of riders through most teams are hired for reasons very different from “winning the TDF”, not even as support riders for a potential winner, and not even with “winning TDF stages” in mind as their main task.
And as for the sponsors, of course a huge lot of sponsors are in for different races which aren’t the TDF (and sometimes, absurd may it sound, wouldn’t go crazy about being at the male TDF, either), for a broad range of reasons, be them local presence on the territory, kind of ideological message they want to communicate, personal or strategic contacts etc.
This is a reply to Gabriele (there is no reply option at your comment, too many replies already for the site):
You are right, I formulated it too careless. I should have written:“ …riders get hired to win the Tour de France and/or do something good/spectacular at it“.
In truth I think it isn‘t even sooo important, that they win anything at the Tour de France in cycling terms(obviously if they can, that is preferred). But most teams are ok as long as they have one rider, who is a talking point at the Tour de France, even if they know very well the rider will never win (at) the race.
@Anon
Even if the bar gets lower, the argument still doesn’t hold.
It’s now 2 years in a row that MvdP goes to the TDF blatantly as a mere training (first for the Worlds and then for the Olympics), which he flows through pretty much anonymously barring the occasional supergregario leadout for Philipsen, and he doesn’t look on the verge of being fired. Hard to defend that the TDF is paramount in his case. Both his sporting and monetary value are actually on the up, and I’d dare to say that it’s not just because he’s a fine leadout man! Note that at the end of 2022 he wasn’t even among the ten most paid athletes The only time he made something of great media relevance at the TDF was 2021… after just going home “to prepare the Olympics”.
Same for Roglic. His contract value looks to be growing as he really gets further and further away from being a serious TDF competitor, from every POV. He had indeed been very important if not even decisive for Vingo’s TDF in 2022, sure, and still Jumbo sent him to the Giro next year. He had a contract until 2025, but he became the centre of a transfer market battle and his wage skyrocketed. He’s simply a general asset, a strong competitor who can bring home victories, even if the TDF is probably his most serious Achilles’ heel.
WVA in his 2022-2023 incarnations fits indeed your new description, now let’s see if after the 2024 failure he keeps that same path.
As for Evenepoel, if you snatch away from his character whatever he did far from the TDF, he’d just be sort of a Carapaz at most, and I doubt that his team would pay him as they do for that sort of profile only.
But I could easily add other examples from the current generation of top athletes, say Mads Pedersen whose team will keep him away from the TDF (whay are they having hiring him?)… he had 2 (two) strong TDFs in nearly a decade at Trek, yet they never fired him. It’s just that they aren’t Muskian-Trumpian at all?
Hirschi? Barring 2020, he never had great TDFs, his very best seasons didn’t even include it, and now went to a team which isn’t even sure if they’ll ride the race.
Bardet changed team because he didn’t want that sort of TDF focus, so, yes, there it was in his previous team, but his story also implies that on the one hand he was done with that, plus that OTOH his new team was keen on accepting such a switch in mentality.
Etc.
Of course the TDF is by far the main event in cycling and a different magnitude when compared to the rest of GTs which on turn are on a different magnitude when compared to Classics (alas). As such, it would be a surprise if most teams were indifferent to that status, be it only because of market/survival reasons.
Yet, *in this very specific moment* the real surprise is how much athletes – a decent number of them, especially among top ones – and, albeit to a lesser degree, *even teams* are sensitive to very different aspects and races, much more related to actual sporting value or the history of the sport.
It’s a slow process of change which probably started during the past decade due to different, partly independent factors and which is also mutually reinforcing with other aspects, like the growing versatility of cyclists as opposed to the age of hyper-specialists.
As any process, of course it can also U-turn (the Giro’s uprise fostered the above process, now its decline might contribute to the opposite one) and bring us back to the beginning of this millenium, but at the end of the day that period was also a parenthesis within an always swinging balance.
On safety, it’s worth noting that racing with minimal – or even NO – road closures is the *norm* for road-racing in at least some places (UK and Ireland). It’s only the absolute top races that can organise full road closures (rare in Ireland), and even that seems to be getting more difficult in the UK?
Then there’s the Netherlands where the dutch police withdrew pretty much all outrider support for almost the _entire_ year because of NATO meeting end of June, meaning no races can go ahead (only police can enforce road closures there) and even the national championships are in trouble! The KNWB are even looking at holding the dutch nationals in another country! Situation is still evolving there. Amstel-Gold was looking dicey at one point, but apparently police have found a way to support it, along with 3 other races – but everything else is cancelled!
In Ireland, racing on open roads is the norm for road. The race is preceded and followed by vehicles warning other users of the presence of the race, but the road is not closed. This may include the Irish national championship and much of the Ras Tailteann – with Pro Conti and sometimes WT pros in attendance.
Roads in a lot of Ireland can be fairly quiet, but roads keep getting busier. Closures get harder and harder to obtain. This seems to be a trend across other parts of Europe? What’s the solution for the future of the sport?
I’ve done a road race in the UK (admittedly a very amateur one) where the peloton was all strung out not because anyone was pressing on or there were cross winds, but because there was a tractor coming down the road!
It’s all a bit reminiscent of the Tour Feminin des Pyrenees, whose 2023 edition was a disaster with cars aplenty causing the riders to down bikes. A new organiser with better political contacts rescued it in 2024.
https://procyclinguk.com/tour-feminin-des-pyrenees-reveals-a-fresh-start-for-2024/
Are French races wholly reliant on police/gendarmes for race security or is there a corpus of moto marshalls available who can legally stop traffic, as per the NEG accredited marshalls in the UK? It does seem that there’s a demand for an organisers organisation (sorry) who can help each other out before the smaller events die off or are all taken over by ASO.
It doesn’t have to be police to stop traffic and the French federation has a category for motorbike riders. But with this presumably comes issues, rounding up enough help to start with, then on the day one volunteer is ill, another’s motorbike breaks down etc… it’s got to be hard. But so is racing and it’s an organisers job to sort this but they have a lot to do.
I can’t find it now but an Italian organiser explained all the tasks they have to do, all sort of details like whether the race route goes near a railway line or an autostrada because if so then rules come into place in case of a traffic accident or rail disaster etc, with access for the emergency services and so more likely a police chief will say no. This is just one detail about route design that sticks, the same for going near a hospital, a care home (ambulance access etc) and so much more.
According to the organiser, the EDB had moving volunteers helping with road closures, including… herself.
Both very good points, anyway, and I can confirm that the situation in Italy is precisely like that.
In Tenerife the now scant local scene (once much more relevant) is facing a good deal of issues due to the police forces only admitting road closures (rolling ones) for cycling races early in the morning and during very little time. The latter aspect implied that women, whose race is mixed with men’s because it wouldn’t be feasible otherwise due to small numbers, were often left with a full DNF field as the police forced the race to be suspended just a few minutes after the leading group goes over any given section of the course. So, typically only a few athletes finish the race, but as I said the worse part is that women struggle to even have a valid result!
Esport is the solution to have cycling races without concerns about road safety or meteorological conditions.
I am not sure this is really a solution. A great deal of the interest in cycle races is in looking at the scenary and countryside. Not many people are much interested in watching a computer image on a screen moving for several hours. In any case, cycle racing also entails bike-handling skills etc, and not just watts on a stationary bike.
No.
It would be a miserable way to replace the real racing experience. The tactical aspect is massively reduced, your descending, wind management and bunch skills become irrelevant and you would lose all the bunch banter and post-race chats with your competitors.
I can’t see why or how it would be a valid spectator experience either. Sorry!
A car entering the course is something which, as a single random event, can be barely prevented by pure vigilance, as roads have many private accesses which can’t be simply watched over one by one. This was the case at Lombardia or when Pantani had that terrible accident in Mi-To, and this is apparently what *also* happened at EDB.
In this case, anyway, part of the question is the summing up of “accidents” through different stages (and in previous editions, too) which strengthens the sensation of structural issues rather than a random freak accident.
That said, these races are paramount for cycling, no doubt, but as the context becomes more complex, the safety bar must be raised, too, was it only to keep a similar standard as in the past.
Part of this complexity (there’s much more of course) is the now diminished popular shared feelings surrounding a bike race.
I’ve long written on the subject above on these pages, so I won’t bore you all again, but this is precisely one of those key aspects I’ve been underlining to explain why road cycling can’t simply “go niche” as other sports or even other disciplines of cycling itself have done in a given moment of their history.
A huge deal of what makes cycling happen is simply beyond or before “free market” or “commodification”, as the concept of *public space* is at the very core of the sporting practice, both in competition and in training (hence further implying, directly or not, public money, public policies, public commitment); so any transition from its original model will prove itself painful and potentially self-destructive.
Cycling (the sport, the events… and perhaps the simple practice of it, too?) being collectively seen as “something generically important” (regardless of whether people personally like it or not) vs. “a pain in the *** which a bunch of lazy hippies or crazy yuppies are at fault for” might make a lot of difference.
And the sport’s media strategies are an essential part of it all…
In Italy, the Alice Toniolli accident sparked a similar debate and even harsher a dilemma. She came home after a coma and five months in the hospital like a couple of weeks ago – by pure chance, precisely the day after Sara Piffer (who was from the same area as Toniolli) was killed while training.
Toniolli and her family, which waited for the athlete to be able again to express herself on the subject, doubted until the very last minute about allowing or not the judicial investigation on the events which would potentially charge in a criminal court race organisers, race director and race jury. Finally, they agreed, but everybody is aware that it could be a hard blow for the sport at grassroots level. At the same time, understanding fully if somebody is accountable for what happened is due, to say the least.
Lack of resources is probably to blame, but as on the one hand the process is gradual and OTOH the failures tend to appear suddenly, randomly and directly at severe degree, it’s extremely hard to perceive at which point it’s really the moment you (as an organiser) should stop the race rather taking the risk.
Plus, the question marks about the sport keeping its whole structure alive and sustainable can’t have just “let’s close more and more races” as the only available answer…
It is just lovely the fantasyland so many in cycling live in.
In this shiny fantasyland you can work hard to destroy a sport and at the same time tell yourself, that you do it not out of an inflated ego, selfishness and old fashioned arrogance, but for „the good of the sport“.
In it you can demand, that roads are closed and that tax money must be spend on police and municipal workers so a few near anorexic men can ride their bike around. And you can even feel righteous and reasonable while doing this and ignore, that by now in most developed countries rape and domestic violence are effectively no longer punished, because the rates of conviction are so low they are no longer existent. Or that many children are not able to use the toilet or walk stairs when they start with school, because for example their parents have to work so many jobs they are non present at home or the parents are addicted to their phone. Or both. And as these days there are no more resources to help parents, the children suffer. But sure, racing a bike is sooo important. Got to have principles, right?
And in this fantasyland you can demand, with a straight face, that people get not only paid for riding a bike, but get paid millions. And you can even say „look how much money other athletes get. This kind of money is also possible in cycling“ at the same time as the sport is not even able to get itself on tv, even if they pay for it!
Ok, to get a bit more serious: while I understand the safety concerns in theory, they are in practice, in real life, tone deaf, if executed this way. Read the room. It is not anymore 1999. Pro cycling can be happy and count themselves lucky, that someone outside the monuments and the Grand Tours still is willing to put on pro cycling races at all!
I would think that these requirements like „closed roads“ etc. will vanish in the near future, simply because nobody will accept it. Probably pro riders will be expected to ride on a small part of the road, alongside the normal traffic.
This is the brave new, brutal and transactional world. Get used to it. Pro cycling played it‘s part ushering it in (I only say: sugardaddies, globalization and nation teams…).
It is even possible, that we will go full feudal times and outside of the monuments and Grand Tours bike races will only be held by rich people and kings as their vanity projects and/or for sportwashing. There the peloton will ride solely to please the king and so that his guests can place bets on them (and of course the king‘s fave rider will win! Who would want to spoil the party!). While the public is either not allowed inside or only allowed in order to bear witness to the king‘s wealth and fortune.
I have absolutely no sympathy and no comprehension for how bike teams in 2025 can leave a race in a huff. They should thank the race organizers on their knees for the opportunity, hard work and love for the sport.
It is maybe inevitable, that cycling attracts a lot of people with a certain mindset. It comes with the territory of being an endurance sport, that is done alone (ok, alone in teams). But inevitable or not, it is a shame. It could do with a few different characters.
I once loved pro cycling, but by now I would rejoice, if it just goes away. It has run it‘s course, it is a sport from another century. There is no sustainable way to do and finance it. It‘s naked addiction to capitalism, it’s willingness to do and be everything for money, is part of the problems we are in.
And so it became a plaything of the rich people. To embrace this in their lust for money and power was the initial mistake (oh „globalization“!). There is no coming back from this. Once you are on that slope, you slither and slide it down and down and down.
From watching every race (in Europe, I never was interested in desert races or highway races) I have gone to only reading about races and then to only watching one race, the Tour de France (because the Tour de France is so much more than pro cycling and it and I have a love affaire I will never end) and then to only watching some of the Tour de France stages.
Pro cycling was for so long such an integral part of my life, that, if you would have asked me, if I can imagine to stop watching it, I would have bet my life on „no“. But then came team sky. Then came vaughters and co with their commercial vehicles (I don‘t even remember their initial name, it has gone through so much iterations). Then came the teams of nation states (but to be precise, team sky was also a nation state team, as was us postal).
Although I wrote it a bit flippantly above, I honestly think, that pro cycling is a doomed sport. And by now I welcome that. Where it goes from here, is anybody‘s guess. A future split is even possible between those, that are in it for the „pro“ part and those, that are in it for the „cycling“ part.
It is obscene, that a/some pro rider earn(s) more than 10k a month and that roads get closed for them. And if they can’t see that, they will have a problem with the people. And the behavior of some (for example leaving a race or only racing a few elite races or trying to blow up the sport in order to swoop in and pick up the juicy parts) is not especially helpful to their cause.
Is there a podcast version of this?
Nah. As I wrote I usually don‘t deal with cycling anymore. Maybe once or twice a year I bring myself up to speed with the latest news/happenings in order to be able to watch the Tour de France with some understanding. This is why I still have some knowledge about it (plus:people are people. It is not so hard to understand the actions or to predict what a certain character will do).
That I was piqued to write this comment is, because so many teams leaving a race was of course news outside of cycling. And this is how it reached me.
The optics of teams leaving a race are horrible (that is exactly why it was mainstream news). And it will have a lot of consequences. Cyclists are not safe on the roads even as it is. And a bunch of pro riders acting elitist and arrogant will only fuel the anger, rage and hate towards cyclists and create an even more dangerous situation.
I also can not understand how they fail so spectacularly to see the sign of the times: The streets are taking over. And the streets never were nice places to begin with (or alternatively you can say we live again in the french revolution – which isn’t much better regarding violence etc.). And people surely won‘t have time for people, who complain, that they can‘t do their sport. Which the public pays for!
In a way you can‘t even blame the riders. They were trained to think of nobody else than themselves. They were trained to see nothing outside their performance, even to the detriment of their own bodies. It is a structural problem of all pro sports in which teams are bankrolled by just one entity/person.
You may well view those pro cyclists who left the race after one crash and repeated situations caused by errant car drivers, but are you that those who (1) still actively follow pro cycling, or (2) those whose familiarity with pro cycling is limited to headlines and news stories in media that do not actively cover pro cycling saw them as “acting elitist and arrogant”?
Me personally?
As I have explained (or thought I had) with me it is a mix. I still know very well the power structure in cycling, I know very well how such decisions are arrived on, the pressure they arrive in etc.. It is one of the reasons why I personally could no longer support or watch the sport.
So now I keep up with it as needed. I watch no more races (outside of the Tour de France), read not anymore about races, but keep up with some of the going ons and informations in order to be able to watch the Tour de France with some understanding.
My sincere apologies for writing hastily, leaving out a word and thus making the sentence even more unclear than it would have been.
I meant to write “– – but are you *certain* that those – – “!
In other word, my question was not about you, but about your apparent conviction that others have reacted to the news the same way you did. I have my doubts about both the great mass of cycling fans and the general public (whose existing “anger, rage and hate towards cyclists” you saw being fuelled by the action of “a bunch of pro cyclists acting arrogant and elitist”.
Do you seriously think that in the biggest European countries there’s a problem of “lack” of public money? Isn’t it at all a matter of “where and how do you channel them”? Do you really feel that the police and other “security services” in Europe are struggling because States are supposedly spending less money in the sector compared with, say, ten years ago? Now most EU countries are facing, if any, a slight contraction in absolute public expenditure as an obvious negative rebound after the post-COVID binge moment, but the scenery definitely changed when compared with mid-10s. However, key sectors are still suffering cuts to the public *institutions* as the increase in public expenditure is diverted through private companies which “provide” public services, with terrible results in terms of efficiency, plus the private sector generally succeeded in turning into its own profit the lion’s share of that growing available public money (“kidnapping of collective wealth”). The above landscape requires defending direct public expenditure as such in, ahem, more or less whatever, even (!) young men and women in lycra offering an open show for the general public.
A classic mistake: claiming that “good” options are necessarily competing among them, not against “bad” options. All data show that it’s the other way around (because it’s about policies, not budget).
Another classic mistake: TINA (ol’ Maggie’s best friend). This is “the way of the world”, things are going this way, so why even bother?
I agree with a good deal of the above, but it also smells like wild generalisation and oversimplification.
There are no easy answers – if any at all – to the EDB situation, or to the Toniolli case.
My POV would perhaps be that these examples show precisely that a collective effort is needed to make this sport work, and that this sport is worthy essentially because it needs that collective effort. Of course many trends are pushing it down the slope you depict above, but at the same time the sport’s relevance and interest lies precisely in the difficulties it “structurally” (so to say, I mean, it’s not anybody’s aware plan! Quite the other way around…) brings up when different subjects try again and again to engulf it in that sort of rising tides.
PS By the way, why should a pro cyclist earn no more than 10K a month? Considering actual worktime, unavoidable risks implied, and the exceptional requirements of the job, plus its short span at top level, this idea really sounds quite unfair or punitive.
Money is never the problem. People are. Because money in itself is of course not real (in the sense, that it is no worth by an in itself). It is just a bunch of paper or metal. What imbues it with worth and meaning is solely the BELIEF of people in it‘s worth. You can show this quite nicely this way: If one person believes money has worth, it is not worth much. If two do, it climbs a tiny bit. But if a whole town believes in it‘s worth, it suddenly IS worth a whole lot.
The whole thing of money is acceptance. People ACCEPT to be governed by money. And only that makes it worth anything. And this also makes it scarce. Thus the answer is: there is not enough money just as there is more than enough money.
So the question/idea „do you really think there is no/any money“ is beside the point. There is and will be always money/enough money, just as there will never be enough/any money. The real question is: what are people WILLING to believe in and what are people willing to do and accept.
And I think you will find it harder than you imagine to get people to „work together“ on anything. Not even 10 years ago this was still seen as an aspirational thing. But today the idea is almost offensive to some. And seen as dumb. Many people no longer believe in things like „the common good“.
People can destroy things together quite easily.Just look at trump being voted in again. Build something together? This is more difficult. But CHANGE something, that already exists? Near impossible. Especially not in times like ours. We are just a thrown stone away from an explosion in so many places right now.
And this in itself creates a certain constant volatility and ill temper even in people, who have in truth no real need to worry. But they FEEL worried. Which means they ACT worried. They will, for example, spend less money, simply because they feel worried.
This is my answer to the „is there enough money“ and „work together on change“ question.
To people, who think things will always stay the same, who think there is such a thing as stability or a status quo I just say: Could you have predicted the way we dealt with covid? Russia invading Ukraine? trump? trump again? So many things happened, that everybody thought would never happen. We live in a world we thought unthinkable just years ago.
Why? Very simple: Stability is no thing, no entity by itself. Instead it is a state, a result of pressures, interactions working on something. If they are constant and/or canceling each other out, it creates „stability“. Which logically means, that the moment one pressure gets more power, the stability ceases to exist (and as described no one person or thing can recreate it again. It needs many. That is why it is so difficult).
And that is where we are now for quite some time (at least since some time after 2008). For stability so many separate parts have to play their role, align a certain way, that it is a rarity and not the norm. That we in our life time had such a long time of it is a freak accident. What we experience now are btw still the consequences of things, that happened a long time ago. Mostly two things: the fall of the east bloc and the 2008 „crash“ of the economies.
So I think pro cycling as we know it now is also a product of that freak accident „stability“. And will vanish with it like many other things.
All this to say: I think you ask the wrong questions. But we will see, if I am right.
To the 10k/month thing:
As with everything, I thought of course about the 10k/month thing before I wrote it. The question I asked myself was: Is there anything so special about a pro cyclist and what he does, that he should earn money with it? And the follow up question: and if I think it is right they should get paid for that, how much in comparison with other people?
This way I arrived on a reluctant „yes, it is maybe justified to pay them“. As to the „how much“-question I looked at how much they contribute to the world/society. And this hinges mostly on one race, the Tour de France (and maybe Roubaix and a few spring races in Belgium). The rest is so niche in comparison as if almost non existent (with a few exceptions, as with every rule).
I further asked myself, if there is something so unique to them, that this alone justifies to pay them a lot of money. And the answer to that was a clear „no“. Every slater (is that the right word?) takes the same risk in their job. Every person cutting trees, working with machinery runs the same risks. Every person driving trucks has the same risks.
Many jobs need people to be in a special physical shape and most people working physically hard work can not do that anymore after getting to 40 or 45, so they also have only a short career. And if you worked the whole day in a tiny office in which 30 people sit and take calls, you do know what total exhaustion is. So much, that it physically hurts to listen to one more word or to form another thought. It may not be exhaustion of the limbs and organs, but it is real, physical exhaustion nevertheless.
So all this combined led me to answer the question: should cyclists be paid and how much? In the way I did. I think 10k/month is quite generous. But this is of course spoken from my perspective. And: just as money gets it‘s worth solely from the imagination of people and their will to believe in it, people also get their worth from how many people believe they are worth this or that. Which leads for example to the current strange situation, in which some people are paid more than all the people of a whole big city earn combined, just for playing the game of football!
(I think, that this answer probably will not satisfy you? But it is the answer I have)
Wild OT, but – it’s not just “money”, all human reality is a matter of frames, more or less local, more or less shared. (Not my copyright of course but rights have long expired…). Within a given frame, as you also notice, what’s deemed real works as real. The frame is constantly made real enacting it through performance, so effects are absolutely real, too.
In a given context, the strategic options concern moving pieces on the board (very small pieces and very small movements, if any, in our case) or, normally as a *personal* option, changing your perception of the borders of the board. The latter is mainly about personal perception, as I said, but it can work on other levels, too. A Vaughters relatedd example? Redefinition of what a pro cyclist is, i.e., new ways to try and extract value from the image of a pedalling person.
Yet, when and if it’s only about you, the impact of watching beyond the board will be limited to your life, of course. In other words, being aware that money is a construct won’t help much in most tasks you might care about in this society, even if it surely might help anyone to live better whatever situation they need to face. Which, on turn, will change little in the big potential which that specific social construct has shown in order to create leverage, coordinate collective action, act as a tight proxy of power (it’s not not the only one, but as noted early by Marx and Engels, or even earlier by sacred texts of several religions, it’s got a strong propensity to wear away the others).
That said, back to 10K. You use a quantity, so what you pretend is to quantify – in a way – but than all of your examples are about qualifying. Other jobs are hard, risky, wear you out, require physical prowess… of course, but how much? People working in the fields you name do actually lose their job mostly around 35? Are they all required the same *amount* of extra training (in addition to normal formation) during their teenage years and often early 20s before getting that job? Is the risk quantifiable as the same? Stats say no.
Other figures (magnitudes). In Europe, the skills needed to be a pro cyclist belong to aprox. one out of 500K persons, that is 0.0002%. Is that true for any job? Teaching at university level is for about 1 out of 1.000, i.e. 0.1% of the population, same for a top surger. Artists and creators with the capacity to demand rights for the use of their work even double that, 0.2%, skills one thousand times more common than a pro cyclist’s… This ain’t about utility only but also scarcity.
And, as for utility, it’s doubtful indeed, yet 1 out of every 5 people in Italy every given May spend a decent percentage of their waking hours to watch or read about those guys crossing the country, ten milllions even to watch them live on TV or from the roadside (not to speak of France and the TDF but as you notice that’s too easy an example).
For someone with such scorn for professional cycling, you’re certainly putting a lot of energy into your comments!
Cycling may or may not be doomed as a sport. Even so, the suggestion that races should be conducted without road closures is ludicrous, like professional footballers playing their matches in my local park, dodging the joggers, dogs and what they leave behind. Except that cyclists and traffic are a potentially fatal combination.
Perhaps pro racing will have to go back to its amateur roots. As per most road racing leagues, supply accredited marshalls or you can’t participate.
If every team had to supply 3 bodies to the race organisation on the day it might help. No bodies, no participation.
Good idea.
“…guidelines assert the principle to stop all non-race traffic, in the rulebook itself there’s the threat of a penalty ex post for organisers if the “race route not entirely closed and road traffic not stopped on the route”.”
Yes, as commissaire, I have multiple times had to report this type of incident. I remember one happening even during the master part of the Groningen-Münster where a lady from a side road simply drove directly into the last third of the strung out peloton riding only at “master speed”. She took out several riders (luckily nt too seriously, everyone could continue )and we had to neutralise for 30 minutes. What ever possesed her to proceed from a stand still past a barraging volounteer into a passing group of 170 bike riders I’ll never understand.
Of course, I had to report this but basically, the organiser was absolutely not to blame, signage and volounteers were well placed, the organiser had done everything “by the book”. And I cannot know how my explanation in the report was perceived at the UCI HQ – this is another problem even with the newer excel sheet type report.
Yes, it’s basically terrorism (quite similar, too), even if those drivers aren’t aware that’s what they’re doing. Asserting the absolute power of their God, the car ^___^
That said, EDB’s issued weren’t limited to a single accident, and that’s the core of the question in this case. Teams didn’t just stop: they negotiated after the first series of accident, then some of them stopped when things went even worse on a later stage, and one or two even stayed in the race for one more stage before quitting on the penultimate stage or so. It shows that ahletes and teams, or at least part of them, understood the underlying dilemma and doubted themselves about the most appropriate course of action. That said, conditions simply can’t fall below a given standard. One single accident is bad luck, if bad luck becomes chronic, probabilities say that something isn’t working as it should or as it normally does. Just accepting it is not a good strategy IMHO.
The vast majority of racing across the World uses some form of rolling road closure. That generally protects the front of the race very well, and also when the race splits with a big enough gap to protect the break and bunch separately, but outside of those conditions there is always risk of the public ‘leaking’ onto a circuit.
A break only needs a few seconds to be out of sight on twisty road and an non-cycling expert member of the public correctly stopped at a junction could assume the race has passed and pull out straight into the bunch. For those dropped off the back of the bunch/convoy the risk is even higher.
Maybe we need to move away from place to place or large loop circuits where the boundary on the field of play can be 300km to more laps of a smaller circuit that can be locked down securely. It must be easier to protect a 30km boundary on a 15km circuit covered 10 times than 150km of road covered once.
That may mean less interesting racing but if it is safer who is to argue?
Regional authorities paying in order to show the place might argue… Plus the local impact on traffic etc. would be way higher bordering unacceptable. And I’m not sure it helps in fostering positive, shared, collective feelings about cycling, rather boosting the niche effect.
However, it’s an ongoing trend for smaller races and it’s what the UCI reportedly wants to enforce in the specific case of EDB.
It’s not how every race should become but it might be a solution for some smaller ones facing temporary (?) shortfalls, as it’s obviously already the case with many U23 races.
A couple of years of simpler courses, extra UCI supervision and consultation/mentoring with senior officials from higher performing races elsewhere would be a good way for EDB to work their way back from this. They need to be supported, not fined.
A strategy that cycling could look to for a bit of inspiration could be the rating system used by officials to rate the pitch and outfield after each international cricket match, with the results being published online for accountability. The great thing about it is that it not only calls out venues which produce sub-standard facilities, but also acknowledges the venues which consistently produce the best quality and whose management can be called on to assist a venue which is struggling.
Yes, excellent points, especially about supporting rather than fining.
And sometimes one might tend to fall into monetary reductionism, but there’s so much you can do to improve things within a given budget.
“The vast majority of racing across the World uses some form of rolling road closure. That generally protects the front of the race very well, and also when the race splits with a big enough gap to protect the break and bunch separately, but outside of those conditions there is always risk of the public ‘leaking’ onto a circuit.”
This is a communication issue, not an intrinsic problem with rolling road closures.
Side roads should be controlled by a marshal for the whole of the rolling closure period, leaving no doubt that the road is still closed. When drivers are directed to pull over on the side of the race route by the police clearing it ahead of the rolling road closure, they need to be given clear directions as to how they will know the road closure is lifted.
I’m a Tour Down Under traffic marshal, and at our race the signal that the road is reopened is that a van with a bright green livery and a light bar showing green lights runs at the back of the race convoy behind the broom wagon. Drivers who are pulled over by the police motos clearing the race route are given a card which explains this and provides notice that entering the course can have serious penalties.
“Maybe we need to move away from place to place or large loop circuits where the boundary on the field of play can be 300km to more laps of a smaller circuit that can be locked down securely. It must be easier to protect a 30km boundary on a 15km circuit covered 10 times than 150km of road covered once.”
That’s true if you are approaching things purely out of concern for personnel requirements. But as @gabriele says, it also introduces other issues such as causing major disruption for a whole day instead of 20-30 minutes. This leads to a higher chance of people getting frustrated while just trying to go about their normal business
Over the years that I’ve done the TDU, there have been a few times where a stage has included up to six laps of a 21km circuit with the finish line at Stirling (e.g. this year’s women’s stage 3, where the whole stage was 5 laps) which have always produced great racing, but they are also among the most difficult stages for traffic control.
Good points. An issue we’re having in Europe (the cause of the worst disruptive event both at EDB and Lombardia) is drivers just deliberately ignoring marshals, like “I’m going to drive over you, good luck”. The part of “serious penalties” is close to non-existent. Media follow up and support would also help (some ex post wake up call like “The driver entering the course last Sunday was sued and had to pay a 1,000 euros fine” or so in the news…).
I don’t have any data on the number of fines handed out for drivers entering the course at the TDU.
I suspect it is not that many, because passing a marshal holding traffic at a side road (or entering from a driveway where there isn’t a marshal stationed) only results in a driver meeting the second layer of the of the overall strategy – a police moto sweeping the route, and it’s a vanishingly small minority who would defy an order from an actual traffic cop.
It also helps that our police have started to consider where a bit of flexibility can be applied safely – e.g. allowing vehicles over a crossroads without turning when there are large gaps and a long line of sight back along the race route, or clearing a car which has pulled over close to a junction by the initial sweep motos.
Unlike what happened at EDB, in big races it’s about very rare events. The sheer quantity and density of police motos is such that, if anything, it makes you wonder about their environmental impact (half joking). And there’s a lot of people, volunteers, different police forces, retired military associations etc. covering nearly every metre of the course. Which is why this very specific aspect of question, IMHO, is rather about prevention of «extreme events/behaviour» instead of «a safe, as in ‘bullet-proof’, structure».
That’s also why my point about sanctioning is much less about sanctions as such and much more creating a social perception of how unacceptable such a behaviour is (hence the media related part). In some countries across the whole Europe we have to face a «culture of impunity» which has been fostered among drivers for a series of reasons and historical circumstances, the simple and authomatic association between driving a car and absolute «liberty». Dismantling such a culture is proving a long and painful process.
The UCI are now hinting at solutions for the traffic problems faced by the recent addition of EDB.
The usual ‘hefty fines’, which will NOT improve safety of them selves, but simply increase UCI revenue. Suggestions that EDB follow the current Dutch trend and be forced onto using smaller circuits, and the one useful suggestion that the organisers be given assistance by placing experienced personnel into the organisation.
The outcomes will undoubtedly be the model that many other smaller events will be forced to take.
Totally off topic but worth pointing out. Inrng may have already mentioned that the New Zealand All Blacks are suing Ineos for non-payment of sponsorship funds. Today Moody’s and Fitches have downgraded Ineos to negative on the basis that their debts are 5-6 times annual earnings. I wonder how much longer the cycling team will last.
See also immense cost cutting at Man Utd.
The Ineos / NZ Rugby case is interesting as the reports say Ineos didn’t make the payment because it is cost-cutting, it doesn’t want to /won’t spend the money. This is relevant for the cycling team.
We also know the team is looking for a co-sponsor and has hired a marketing agency to help find one but is Ineos wanting to leave? Because if they were after a replacement title/lead sponsor then they would have to say they’re looking for a co-sponsor because to say the main backer was going without any news on a replacement would prompt even more of an exodus. Speculation here but we’ve seen scenarios like this play out before. On the other side several teams seem keen to stay around and see what they can get from One Cycling so we’ll see.
Interesting pieces in today’s (Saturday) grauniad on sir big Jim’s financial woes both at ineos (the company) and at Manchester united
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/feb/15/chemicals-cars-man-utd-jim-ratcliffe-ineos
Always hard to find!
This (and a couple of other things or three…) actually makes you wonder if the flawed structure is cycling’s or capitalism’s, where the latter barefacedly admits that it can only work as long as somebody else is paying for the real costs of, well, essentially whatever. What they call “rules”, and which they hate of course, is simply being held accountable for at least a very very small part of the bill – but that’s enough to push most companies to the ropes. Jumbo didn’t leave cycling (and all sport sponsorship) because cycling’s business model was a problem (although they could be sooo vocal about it), they left because they were caught money-laundering. Now let’s see what happens with Ineos.
Of course, there’s a broad range of situations, with probably the highest “sponsor killer” being the use of antidoping as a political weapon.
But financial events not related to the sport can be traced behind the end of many a famous sponsorship (Mercatone Uno, BMC, Euskaltel, Tinkoff). And, some other times, you can see how a cycling structure survives its sponsor which gets bought or merged (Banesto, Motorola, Novell…).
The boys on The Cycling Podcast said that the video of Pogacar riding the Paris-Roubaix cobbles got over a million views in an hour. I thought that was an interesting point in relation to the debates about cycling’s “struggles.” Certainly food for thought.
That is indeed interesting. But I think these are mostly views from slovenia?
What would be really interesting is therefore to know how many of them came because of his nationality.
Take Remco Evenepoel. He is a superstar. Millions of people will read everything about him. They will know, if he has a girlfriend/wife, what music he likes and if he has frowned-slightly- last Thursday around 9 in the morning. And if this -slight-frown might have had a knock on effect on his training on Friday. But the vast majority of that will be in Belgium or with people, who care/know him, because he is from Belgium. Then comes another group, much smaller, that cares about him/knows of him from cycling. And that was that. There is no reach outside of that, no crossover.
Personally I know not one person, who knows either pogacar nor Evenepoel. Not one, who has even heard their names.
Anecdote: One interesting thing I observed some years ago was, that where I work, nobody knew the name froome. Till he had a doping case against him. By that time he already had won a few Tour de Frances. But even though some of my colleagues even watch some stages of the Tour de France, none knew who had won there or who was riding. But when the doping case started, they suddenly came up to me (because they knew I was into cycling) to talk about him. Suddenly they knew his name.
Oc course this is a personal observation, but nevertheless something can be observed through them.
Another thing, that I myself also try to adjust to and which has not specifically something to do with pogacar: the views on the net are crazy, inflationary. The numbers involved look like hallucinations! Once upon a time views in the millions were „wow“! Last week I came upon a rap song/video, that was only two weeks old and stated, that it had had 120 Mio. views in those two weeks. Hm. What to think about that? Honestly, I really am unsure, if these metrics have any meaning and if they have, what exactly do they mean?
I don‘t doubt, that pogacar is in cycling one of the superstars. But I am not sure, that this can be translated meaningfully into the general public. For a crossover I think the superstar must have something „special“. Either looks, personality or …anything. And with all respect to pogacar, he seems to be a nice person, but I don‘t think anyone can sy, that the public lusts after him or hangs on his every word, waiting for his famous halfsmile- or any blurb like that.
Is there a podcast version of this?
Sorry for replying again, it’s like a pattern now… I share a good part of the general ideas, but some specific point is off the mark.
You’re right, the same person watching even partially a video several times accounts for several “views”, the latter aren’t obviously – not even by far – comparable to the sort of “viewership” which can be measured in TV’s case; plus the number of views is also relevant in terms of percentage of a given social group (for example, a nation etc.) as it generates positive saturation and critical mass, having 150M views scattered across billions of people hasn’t the same impact.
That said, I doubt strongly that Slovenia may account for a significant part of that view accumulated in a single hour. The average viewership of a TDF stage in Slovenia is 150K, I think, which are very good figures and, in fact, the share is exceptional, but a country with the same inhs. as the Canary Islands (actually, Slovenia’s got a little less…) won’t ever provide a significant quota in a number like the one reported above.
That said, general fame is a peculiar thing, Contador and Sagan achieved a notable impact outside the strictly cycling-related fan world, even far from their home country, Froome pretty much less so, indeed.
However, that’s a phenomenon which at least in the countries I live in is becoming more and more common even in “major” sports. Fragmentation/personalisation of audience. Even football is becoming a “tribe”, albeit a veeery big one. After Cristiano and Messi, common people not specifically interested in football only know, if anything, their locals – not even national athletes, just those born in the region or playing for the local teams. Curious.
We don‘t know.
Of course I thought beforehand about exactly what you write about:
– one one hand: slovenia is small and 1 Mio is much in that context.
– On the other hand: cycling fans, that watch videos are surely even less. And general people, who are neither slovenian, nor into cycling, who watch this? I would bet heavily on: zero (because to them neither the name pogacar, nor Paris-Roubaix would mean anything. They simply would have no clue what it means or even, if it means anything – and therefore would not felt compelled to watch it. To them it is just a cyclist riding a bike. Hardly interesting.
– On a third hand (!): 1 Mio is not enough, that it went viral for some strange reason.
So, the question still is: where do these 1 Mio come from?
And my answer was/is as I wrote:
Especially in small countries, that have not necessarily people, who are famous outside of their country, when they have such a person it becomes an outsized thing. Everybody and their niece (?) is suddenly interested in what this person does, they scout the net for them, have all kinds of alarms and stuff set, to always catch the latest news. And to them this would indeed be important, if their national hero rides somewhere. Anywhere. They are the only group, to whom this is of any urgency. Because yes, for cycling fabs this is interesting and some will surely watch it – but it isn‘t earth shattering.
All the above is one side of my answer.
The other side of it is, that I remember reading a piece 2 years ago about internet numbers (it was about another small country and another niche sport – ski jumping, I think- , but though it was a different country and sport, the methodology stays exactly the same, so I felt I could apply it here) and national superfans of a star in a country driving up traffic on the net, but that it pretty much stopped when that national star stopped winning. The piece was about the importance of understanding properly the data underneath and not just following the overall numbers etc.. And it pretty much underlined the picture I painted above.
Combined these two sides formed the backbone of my comment.
Generally:
I might be totally wrong, I might be half right or totally right – and that is not really the point as I was formulating an idea, a theory. And this (or anything) is no truth-commission. And none of us is on trial. This is a comment section.
The point is, that I did it to the best of my ability and responsibility. And that really is quite good enough. Because it is not about being right or wrong or point scoring. At least it should not be.
It is about doing something with the most honesty and truth you can muster. About holding yourself accountable to a standard. Then that is good enough. And it is about accepting and respecting that. From this can then flow a discussion, learning, teaching, whatever and in the end hopefully everybody is a bit wiser and a bit more. And maybe even laughed once or twice.
(I am of course fully aware, that in 99% of the cases it is none of what I described above. I am not blind. Instead people solely use communication exactly for judgment, for belittling others, for point scoring, for making themselves feel better than others – but that does not mean, that I have to play along with it or have to partake in it. Even, if I alone do it the way I described it above in a whole ocean of people doing something else. Because my business is not what other people do. My business is what I do).
Therefore it might be, that I got something wrong. If that happens, then-well, then I got something wrong. And? So what? Happens. I am not allknowing, allunderstanding, all-anything. If I learn something I did not know through that-that is great! A new thing I can add to my toolbox. And even if not, I am not bothered.
Of course swimming against the tide with open eyes costs a lot of energy. Sometimes I do have that energy, sometimes not. Then I have to fake it, till I have it again. What always helps is, when people are gentle with each other. Because logically:the rougher the waters, the easier we bruise in it.
What would indeed really be interesting, would be to see how the numbers skew, how many of them were real, unique viewers, how these came to know of the video, how they happened to watch it directly after it got published etc.
(1) I knew about Paris-Roubaix long before I knew any of the names of the cyclists who rode it.
(2) As a long-time fan of ski jumping I´m curious to know what was the country and who was the once but no longer victorious athlete.
(3) I dare guess you do not stem from a small country (with only a limited number of succesful athletes in a limited number of sports at any given time).
(4) I haven´t watched the much spoken (on the net) Arenberg cobbles video, but it has featured in my social media feed (although probably not within the first hour). Does one actually have to watch it to be counted as a watcher?
To add just one thing.
I am not sure there is a correlation with the viewer number you mentioned. I doubt you can deduct from the numbers of race viewers the number of people watching news. Because this are in their nature fundamentally different kinds of information.
And while it works onesided, meaning you CAN say, that those, who watch the race, will for sure be in the number, who watch the news, it does not work the other way around. Those, who watch the news about pogacar will not watch all the race.
So if for example 150k watch races with pogacar, you could with relatively much confidence say, that at least 150k will watch news about pogacar. But not, that, if 500k watch news about pogacar, at least 500k will watch the news.
Because, as I have said, the nature of news or a race is not the same. News are a novelty, they are short and informative. They will always attract more and different people than a race. A little bit like: many people watch a trailer, but not all of them the movie.
It’s not about correlation. It’s to get an idea in terms of “weight”, i.e., about what a 2M inhs. country can produce in terms of viewing figures.
A social shared video isn’t a newsreport even. It’s not broadcast. That’s why the time window is a relevant data. In a few weeks time, maybe half Slovenia will have watched that video (I doubt it). But there’s no way that such a small country could ever give a big impulse to the 1st-hour-views number.
No doubt that Slovenia will be very relevant in relative terms, that is, their presence will be relatively more notable than other countries’, but not in absolute terms. Just guessing, exact figures would be interesting.
Another suggestion… check the PCS fav500 page and you’ll have a hint about the national interest distribution re: Pogacar.
I just noticed that ESPN, the most visited sports website in the world, has no cycling content. There is no cycling category on their website. They cover professional wrestling and the little league world series, but no cycling. This in a country of more than 300M people and 7k bicycle stores.
OTOH as I noted elsewhere among the 450M inhs. of the European Union baseball, NFL, NHL, EEUU motorsports (Nascar or whatever they’re called) etc. are a niche even smaller than cycling in the USA…
But that can mot be translated back to back, can it? Because the difference is: „They“ compete in cycling, while „we“ do not in the nfl, mbl or nba etc.. And that means, that espn should have at least a section of cycling. Especially as THE sports site.
I would have BET, that they have a cycling department. And would have been totally wrong. I think it is crass, that it has become so insignificant there.
So, this is my last comment in this thread, I am now ending my „cycling holidays“ again (Puh!)
Good point, but European athletes do compete in NBA, and as you say that’s probably why there’s some more interest about it. Not much anyway. There’s a cultural factor, than local time, geographical feelings etc. Despite globalisation, top cycling is a very European sport, with Australia a surprise guest of sort.
If European football/soccer which is a worldwide beast struggles to get market penetration there due to the above factors (a bit what TOG also points out here), imagine cycling…
It’s kind of ironic that the US has had a lot to be excited about in cycling during the past few years, but almost no Americans even know that. Kuss winning the Vuelta made a couple ripples, especially in Colorado. Free to air programming is basically ignored by most people under 60, but the death of the old cable tv model made it much less likely that the cycling curious would randomly encounter a race (which is how I got interested). Kristen Faulkner got some attention, but some of the interviews were cringe-inducing!
I understand why you might think that, but I would bet that the NFL has more fans in Germany alone than pro cycling has in the US. Same with the NHL in Scandinavia.
The US has a strange relationship with cycling. We participate a lot, and American bike brands are globally important. But most Americans only care about sports we are “great” at, which is why even soccer/football/futbol has taken decades to gain a foothold in the American sports scene.
It’s hard to overstate how much damage Armstrong did to the sport in the US, and it’s not like Lemond was an easy person to root for before Lance. So people still participate in various types of cycling (gravel and mountain biking are relatively popular), but as a spectator sport it barely moves the needle. Outlets like ESPN leave it to specialists like Outside magazine to present cycling content, and then the big publications like the New York Times and Wall St Journal will report on the TdF. Outside that, it’s down to the truly niche like Escape Collective, which only the cycling mad will seek out.
1,31 Millions watched the superbowl here in Germany. Some of them are NFL fans, I guess, most watched it cause it’s hyped and don’t care for the NFL for the rest of the year. Or like me only watched the halftime for seeing Kendrick destroying an overhyped Canadian who loves ‘a minor chord’
The above would suggest that indeed the NFL has not more fans in Germany than cycling in the USA as a whole…
(Fans, not viewers)
Actually, from what I’ve seen the American presenters of the TdF would be thrilled to get 1.31 million viewers. Of course, it’s not an apple-to-apples comparison so it’s not worth splitting hairs. The only reason I made that point is to explain where professional road cycling fits in the American spectator sport hierarchy. But I do know one person who knows who Pogacar is. Certainly a lot of room for growth! I know this is getting further afield, but when I’ve watched major test match rugby I’ve often wondered how much Italians care about it. Is it also a small niche?
Having been in Rome last weekend, I can confirm that the locals – at least in bars, cafes, etc – were definitely aware that rugby was happening, and who Italy were playing, but were generally unaware of the score. Which was a small mercy in the circumstances.
@The Other Craig
Yes, of course we’re in the approximation category (same for the data I posted above re: Slovenia). It’s just material to sketch out rough estimates about magnitude. One would need to know if a given TV show was on air free or pay and other geographical details. My point was that we can probably assume that, by the nature of the event, Superbowl’s viewers >> “NFL fans”, even in the USA, I’d dare to say, but much more so in Germany (wild guess) or in Italy (based on data). On the contrary TDF TV viewers *when expressed in terms of average per stage* tend to be at most equal but quite probably much less than cycling fans, with few exceptions (probably only France), essentially by the nature of the measurement and show (as it happens with the Superbowl, not all that watch are fans, but the percentage is less skewed; plus, and even more important, most of the times fans won’t be able or willing to watch all the stages. You can appraise the above checking average TV data with other inquiries into the number of fans a sport have. Italy’s got solid data about cycling having currently nearly 6M of “fans/followers”, even if the avg. viewers of Giro stages are now around 1.4M, gradually decreasing from nearly 2M a decade ago).
TDF viewership in the USA during the last 30 years swinged between 400K and 1.7M (avg. per stage), which corresponds roughly to an estimate of 1-4M people having watched some of it specifically (not just newsreport). I wouldn’t dare to say that the number of cycling fans is 3x as in Italy, but it probably sits in the range of “units of M”. 1% of tot. population when compared to 10% in Italy (actual fans, not mild, general interest by unspecified public). My wild guess for “NFL FANS” in Germany based on the above is one magnitude less in absolute terms than cycling in the USA, yet it’s indeed probably similar as a percentage of population.
In Italy the Superbowl goes on air *for free* on one of the 6 *main national channels* and it struggles to hit 400K. It’s essentially negligible, it sits below any flat stage of a short stage race.
As for the other question, rugby in Italy is decent, well above NFL obviously, but also far below cycling. Now it sits in the 400-800K viewers range for Six Nations or big Test Match events. Its peak was 10 years ago when it could get close to 2M figures on several occasions. The percentage of fans over viewers is higher than in Superbowls case, again quite obviously.
In defense, viewer numbers of Superbowl *live* in Europe aren’t that expressive, since not many people are able or willing to watch from midnight to 5am at Monday morning, it contradicts with normal life and work.
Guess there could be way more views if it would be aired on Sunday evening at 20:15