Every year riders say they want to target the Ardennes races, this period of racing in late April with hilly races in Belgium and beyond. It’s a trap.
First a geography lesson in pedantry. “The Ardennes” is a label applied to a series of hilly races in late April spanning from the Brabantse Pijl to Liège-Bastogne-Liège with the Amstel Gold Race and today’s Flèche Wallonne along the way. How many are actually in l’Ardenne?
One, Liège-Bastogne-Liège. The map above comes from ardennebelge.be and you can see Bastogne in the middle on the right. Liège though sits outside to the north. But another site writes “the Ardennes is a land of nuances. Its borders are always fluid” and you can argue Liège and Huy are gateways to l’Ardenne and so the Flèche dabbles with the border area, especially early today around Esneux.
All this is fine in a heuristic sense. Cycling insiders know what “the Ardennes” means, it’s become a catch-all label for the races in a similar part of the world at a similar time of year. Geographical imprecision is normal, take the five Monuments: Milan-Sanremo doesn’t start in Milan any more; the Tour of Flanders doesn’t tour Flanders, Paris-Roubaix starts in Compiègne and Il Lombardia, formerly the Tour of Lombardia, only ever visits three of the 12 provinces of Lombardy these days. Liège-Bastogne-Liège is the most honestly named Monument.
Those riders that are too light for the cobbled classics can find terrain to suit here and something to aim for, just as the cobbled classics specialists get their races earlier this month. Google the phrase briller dans les Ardennes and you get a stream of riders hoping to “shine in the Ardennes” that goes back as far as the internet.
But it’s a very difficult goal. For starters we’re talking about four races whereas the cobble specialists get many more with the likes of Le Samyn, Dwars door Vlaanderen, the E3 and plenty more. Even if this window expands to include the Tour of the Basque Country it’s still an evanescent moment in the calendar. By contrast among these cobbled races there’s variety, the Ronde van Vlaanderen for example is culturally a highlight of this cobbled season but has so many climbs now that it excludes plenty of cobbled specialists. The average weight of this year’s podium was under 70kg. Now it’s hardly a climber’s paradise but the point is that riders thinking of the Ardennes could tag the Ronde too. Romain Grégoire has done just this year.
Otherwise “the Ardennes” is a tiny part of the calendar to hang spring hopes on. Right now Matteo Jorgenson makes a cruel illustration as he put his focus on these races only to break a collarbone in the Amstel last Sunday. Now anyone can target a grand tour and leave in the first week too; it’s more that targetting these races means aiming at just four races or in the case of Jorgenson three as he didn’t do the Pijl. Even if he was left unharmed in the Amstel it’s a tiny window, a spyhole in the calendar. Nevermind Jorgenson as every year plenty aim for the same.
Still targetting the “Ardennes” races has made increasing sense, these races increasingly reward similar riders. The Amstel has evolved over the years to become hillier. It used to finish in Maastricht and was open to sprinters like Erik Zabel, Johan Museeuw and Olaf Ludwig (pictured).
Similarly the Flèche Wallonne may feel like the most scripted race of the season with its uphill finish that has seen a bunch sprint every time since 2004. We’ll never know if Mauri Vansevenant could have broken the run in 2020 when he had a good lead with 10km to go only to crashed into a bank of stinging nettles. The Scheldeprijs by contrast has had more tactical variety this century. But it wasn’t always this way. The idea of the Flèche Wallonne was to from cross one side of Wallonia to the other, a direct line across the map or a giant arrow, hence the name, the “Walloon Arrow”. It’s been hilly because of geography but most editions have had a flat finish.
Today it’s defined by the vicious Mur finish and rather than an arrow it has almost become a circuit race where the start location varies but sees the race defined by laps around Huy. Huy is a settled point but this owes itself to a historical accident.
In the early 1980s the race was owned by Théo Van Griethuysen, a publisher known for his newspaper Le Sportif 70 which became Le Sportif 80 magazine. He was looking for a new place to host the finish. One day he was driving along the Meuse valley when his car broke down. He called a local hotel and stayed overnight at the Hotel du Fort which belonged to a friend while his car was being repaired. One thing led to another, the hotel owner called over the mayor and talks began and the race finished in Huy. Two years later the Chemin des Chapelles was picked for the finish and soon branded le Mur de Huy, the “wall of Huy”.
It begs the question, would today’s finish up the Mur exist if a car part hadn’t failed one day in 1982?
Race photos: ASO/Thomas Maheux + Gaëtan Flamme
It seems to me that the title “Flèche Wallonne” would better serve as the nickname for a rider than as the name of the race! Problem is that my depth of knowledge of the riders is insufficient to suggest any candidates.
The prime candidate could be Arnaud De Lie but his bovine name seems more apt.
Some people find the current version of Fleche Wallonne hard to understand. I really like it
The formation of the World Cup in 1989 is what really killed the Fleche Wallonne. It was excluded since it was a midweek race. As a result the race was shortened from monument length to 200km. Up until twenty years ago, it was raced more like Liege-Bastogne-Liege, with a small group coming to the finish. Now they just jog round the circuit until a final dash up the Mur de Huy.
Is there a story in relation to mid-week versus weekend races … how it all evolved?
Fleche Wallonne and Liege-Bastogne-Liege were originally held on consecutive days over a weekend. They both had more-or-less the same level of prestige: both were included in the “eight big classics” after the war. I guess many riders considered two big races too tough, so from 1960, Fleche Wallonne was run during the week.
The World Cup started in 1989, and (similar to the idea behind One Cycling) the aim was to have a season long race series where all the races were held on the weekend, and all the top riders would ride the races. Both Fleche Wallonne and Ghent-Wevelgem (at that time) were midweek races so they were excluded from the World Cup. This seriously damaged the prestige of both races, from which (in my opinion) neither has really recovered.
In the last 30 years, races have started to be televised. And I think it is clear that midweek races get much lower audience figures. But I don’t think this was a problem back in the 1980s and before, since the races were barely televised back then.
Enjoyed this bit of history John, thank you.
It’s not like the World Cup appeared from nothing as One Cycling, it clearly followed the steps of SPP which on turn was heir to Desgrange-Colombo. By the way, the origin of the latter is meaningful as it was intended to overcome the national segmentation of the sport and early trends of specialisation. It’s also interesting as it could be regarded as something more than an “entente cordiale” between what we’d now call ASO, RCS and FLCL (the former two were more or less the same, just the three were all essentially newspapers back then).
However, it’s pretty clear that along history the selection of what Classics were such happened within those paradigms, which, on turn, of course mirrored the status of races, but not always and not obviously so – just as it happens with WT, some races had to be included because of their actual status but others were left out despite their importance whereas others again got included in order to promote cycling in “promising” nations which were just appearing on the scene, or, for example, to grant some recognised one-day races to important countries which had no specific tradition in that category. This happened more and more as sport politics and commercial aspects gained more relevance, at first within SPP, later under the UCI umbrella.
So you can see that in the CDC one-day racing featured exactly as what John calls “the eight classics”, LBL being the latest addition in a couple of season time (one-day racing scored points along with TDF, Giro, and… Tour de Suisse, the Vuelta being a very late addition).
When CDC morphed into SPP due to conflicts between the different international organisers, the latter was born as a “French thing” (albeit attributing points to every sort of international race), I mean when just “prestige” with no “super” attached, although it soon was intended to actually acknowledge who the strongest cycling was, from France and very soon internationally so. But it no longer depended on agreements between parts, so politics became even more important. At the same time, it became so diluted due to its intention to reward the best across so many races that… it was very similar to the early WT classification, nobody really cared *that much* about being number one, or, better said, nobody raced with *that intention*, like calculating how you’d get the points and where, whereas, for example, this shortly happened with the World Cup in the 90s.
The story of the relevance of most Classics has its roots there.
When the World Cup was created by the UCI because Pernod couldn’t be sponsoring anymore (perhaps due to alcohol sponsoriship was forbidden on something like that), race could have been moved to weekends, but there was also a matter of “distributing” WC races among countries in a balanced way, plus the elements I had highlighted above, namely the desire of promoting some races in countries which were politically and historically strong in the sport but not in one-day racing or hadn’t such a specific tradition; or having “new” countries in.
The political POV is extremely important to understand why many important Classics didn’t feature while others, not as relevant, actually did. Sometimes the above didn’t have much effect, sometimes it shaped the future of a race.
Gabriele:
The eight classics already were in existence *before* the CDC series started. The CDC took the eight classics + two Grand Tours + Tour de Suisse and made a year-long best-rider award out of them. These were already established as the most prestigious races at the time. The CDC collapsed because of arguments about how to rate performance across the different types of races.
Similarly the SPP series added the most prestigious races outside France to the existing french award to make an award for the best overall rider each season. [A bit more complicated, actually, but the details aren’t necessary.]
While I agree that the World Cup had similarities to the previous SPP and CDC. Nevertheless, a big difference is that the races derived (a great deal of) their prestige by being in the World Cup. It created several new races to be in the series which only mattered since they were World Cup races. And it excluded some older established races which then lost prestige. It also only included one-day races, which badly affected the leading one-week stage races.
To add to this there have been times when Liège was the mid-week race (it has been on a Monday and Friday too) and the Flèche was the Sunday race and part of the Super Prestige calendar too.
Yes, there was quite a bit of variation from year-to-year after 1960. Occasionally the races were run on two consecutive weekends. But mostly Fleche was the midweek race. The two races regularly alternated year-by-year as to which was included in the SPP series.
The Flèche Wallonne is the easiest race to catch up if you missed it. When you see a replay, you don’t really know where to start for most of the races. Here it’s crystal clear.
E
Really enjoyed this article thank you.
For anyone who is interested – cyclingnews membership ran two articles on the state of cycling that are worth a look links below – I suspect many here do not have membership access, I don’t want to ruin cyclingnews’ business model but there are very quick ways around this with a quick google if you wish to read. I wish the articles were a little more in depth but I guess I’ve become a bit of a geek on this side of things, and these two give at least a broad overview. Well timed to coincide with Fleche Wallonne which as John mentions above has been pushed and pulled over the years into the often maligned affair it is today.
1
https://www.cyclingnews.com/pro-cycling/a-billion-dollar-business-soon-to-be-a-relic-what-pro-cycling-can-learn-from-the-blueprints-of-f1-and-soccer/
2
https://www.cyclingnews.com/pro-cycling/an-illogical-calendar-crazy-attitudes-towards-safety-and-an-outdated-relationship-with-its-fans-what-needs-to-change-for-cycling-to-catch-up-with-other-sports/
It reads like Jonathan Vaughters has been ghost writing the pieces for them. Normally I rate Stephen Farrand’s pieces highly but this is too simple, I know it’s 1000 words and not 10,000 but some things don’t stand up. For example the Tour de France has to be free to air on TV in France, but also several other countries where a lot of the audience comes from. So you can’t turn it into some pay-per-view moneyspinner if you want. Or the line that ASO generates “at least €250 million per year from cycling” seems unsourced and unconvincing given ASO’s latest accounts show total profits of €131 million, cycling generates a fraction of this number not a multiple.
Exactly, applying an American MBA business model case to cycling doesn’t work (it’s been proven many times over the years).
Also, for the record, applying an American MBA business model to most north american sports entities doesn’t work either – many NBA teams are unsellable with very poor TV contracts, MLB teams not named the Dodgers or Blue Jays have very tricky cash flows, etc.
Obviously, there is value, but it isn’t easy or automatic to make billions. In depth analysis is always best.
Yes, I felt similar that I could’ve done with 10,000 words rather than 1,000 – but was happy the conversation is out there, as being a hardcore cycling fan who is very positive about this era, you’re often caught in a strange feedback loop of some fans saying ‘it’s boring, we keep seeing the same winners, I hate it’ who are then the same people saying ‘don’t change a thing, I love it, it’s all perfect’ – which is hard to digest when you then get the triple whammy of contradiction in the few races Pog loses being universally hailed as all time greats?
I’m aware humans (including me!) are fairly hypocritical which is fine, but as a long term fan, it seems so clear that this era has dramatically changed the sport I/we love so I’m very interested to see what people cleverer than me will take from that.
Personally I feel this era has done two things at once in exposing both the strengths and weaknesses of the sport which makes unravelling it fairly nuanced, which then clearly leads to the knee jerk reactions of ‘change nothing’ or ‘change everything’ – as it’s unfortunately all too complex and time consuming right now for even die hard fans like us to think through.
But I’m very keen for someone to really go after this whole issue in an informed/politically astute way at some point, the way a think tank or impartial commission might – which will be anathema to many who hear any words close to managerial or bureaucracy and immediately see red but often much of what we love about a life comes via this kind of forward planning so I’m all in favour of letting some experts have a debate and scribble down some ideas.
INRNG would be one of my first votes to be elected to any committee!
The one thing I wondered about from the above article is if the TDF accounts for 80% of the sports revenue (I think that number is more specific than I’ve just said but I’m just a dumb commenter so please forgive) what would happen in another universe where the teams all got on, if they boycotted either the Tour or the rest of the season to wrestle some kind of leverage in this ongoing debate? I honestly cannot believe how little power, support or help the teams/riders get in the overall sport so have always been surprised they’ve not banded together sooner to do something.
Don’t believe all you read in a clearly biased article, and don’t mistake opinions of some interested parties for an expert panel. May I suggest.
I don’t think I said I’ve believed all that I read in this article? In fact the opposite by noting it would be preferable to there was more depth.
But I enjoyed both INRNG’s response and CA’s, thank you both for your replies. I’m in full agreement with CA that in depth analysis is always best which is why I’m here to see what responses come and longing for a better evaluation of the entire issue.
As a fan of both football and motorsport for longer than I have been of cycling, if I have learned anything it is the following; as long as your competitors are entrants in competitions you are fine. From the moment your competitors are involved in the organisation and rule making of those competitions you are in trouble. When you get to the point where the whole purpose of your competition is to make money for the entrants, you are dead as a sport. There is a distinction between a sporting competition that just happens to be entertaining, and entertainment that is in the form of a sporting competition. Without going into immensely tedious detail there is ample evidence across the past 40 years of top level European football, Formula 1 and the World Rally Championship that illustrates this point. Be careful what you wish for.
Ok, let’s give it a try. “Teams” is very different from “riders”. Each of those categories is divided in subgroups sometimes with strongly conflicting interests and agendas. Which is why they don’t find a common agreement.
Currently (unlike, say, 15 years ago), *big* teams are in a very strong strategical and economic position, which they’re using to leverage big time against the other institutions, often taking advantage of their strong ties with some USA producers – just in case you hadn’t noticed the GPS or gears conflict.
Big teams also tend to foster an approach damaging smaller teams.
Top riders have some margin in this system, the rest must feel content with increased money (which they get) but accept some abusive conditions from their team or just fall down to a smaller one where they will be deprived of much winning chances.
The real issues of the sport aren’t being tackled for now by the CN series, i.e., number one, grassroots drying up.
But of course Vaughters is interested in making money while he’s alive, not what might happen in 50 years or 30. He thinks workers will be fine if the hiring company is rich and powerful, but most of us might know it doesn’t work like that in real world. Just look at the examples. F1? What the heck? How many sportspeople form the global population of F1, or even “car pilots” , ahem… movement? Tennis is fine, only athletes out of the first, dunno, 300?, have to fix matches for a living, all healthy there.
It’s not pure chance. It’s a business perspective vs. a human-social one. How strange communication is complicated!
Just look at how they talk about safety…
But whatever. By the way, 80% is not “over total revenue of the sport” but percentage of tv exposure for participating teams. It’s not like two similar things.
I enjoyed these answers and thank you for replying.
I’m not fully persuaded by either as I do feel like for some reason there’s a habit with this one to see everything as binary, that this is business vs sport, that it’s all or nothing or there’s only one real problem rather than many?
I think your argument is a good one Richard but surely there is a middle ground? If you were a fan of football and motorsport once then at some point they must have been doing something right to grab your attention, even if you think the dial has now been pushed too far? Couldn’t cycling be at one end of the scale and those sports at another where both could learn a little from one another? I feel like while your answer is persuasive, it’s just too neat and falls into what I guess I think of as the H.L.Mencken trap after reading one too many ‘economics for dummy’s books’ (I’m the dummy in this, not you!).
But I do feel like we can take a lot from your opinion as well as Gabriele’s and Vaughters, so I can sit and mull with a cup of tea in a fairly futile thought experiment, because all I really want is to feel like someone is trying, which is why I cannot dislike for example Adam Hansen the ways others do – trying is important.
I guess sometimes when I read Gabriele’s train of thought, I find it quite oppressive, despite being well informed and likely the best contributor to this comments section, there are times where I just want to give other opinions the time of day, because to me pointing to grassroots above all else is not that far from the classic Simpsons joke ‘think of the children’ – in that it’s always easy to end any argument by simply saying ‘grassroots is what really matters’.
As far as I can see Vaughters has spent his entire career in cycling so even if I/we/this comments section end up disagreeing with him, it’s still worth giving him or Richard Plugge a little airtime, or more importantly trying to see it from their point of view, just in case there is some common ground to found. I feel like too often we jump to saying ‘this persons all wrong’ rather than saying which parts we might agree with which is often more interesting even if there’s only one or two – I would actually love to hear which part of the Vaughters agenda Gabriele agrees with and why as I suspect they’d be very insightful and well reasoned opinions.
But this conversation has informed me of a few things I had not thought of so I appreciate the time people have taken to respond. Aware this section is about the Ardennes so won’t post again on this here.
“Couldn’t cycling be at one end of the scale and those sports at another where both could learn a little from one another?”
I appreciate your desire to be optimistic at all times, but I also think realism is fairly important. Businesses never stop. They always want more return, more growth. Why or how would cycling manage to avoid the trap that every other sport, every other walk of life in the mature capitalist world we live in, has fallen into? It would eventually end up owned by venture capitalists, and it would be sweated for all it is worth. Its sole aim, its only purpose, would be to give return on investment. Sport is not an investment. If Vaughters, Plugge or anyone else, want to make money there are a multitude of other ways for them to do so. Presumably, they already are. I don’t think Vaughters lives in a terraced house.
I don’t really understand what you think you will gain from it? You won’t make any money, and the sport you like will become harder and more expensive to watch? Like you say, something about football and motorsport attracted me to start with, and presumably there is something in the existing structure of cycling that you enjoy as well?!
Oh I understand now. This will be my last post here:
You think I want that version of cycling, I get it. Sorry I should’ve been clearer – I am not arguing for what you think I am, only a more wide ranging debate over how improvements can be made.
For me cycling is already owned by many people, including nation states (which I dislike intensely), so in my view we aren’t as far removed from the venture capital monster you fear but the truth is I’m far more basic than this and just want to give people a fair hearing and not jump to conclusions, as I think improvements are possible and my position as to how has changed on this many times thanks to listening openly to others opinions here.
I think this topic is just too thorny for this comments section sadly – it’s either the death of cycling or a fairytale utopia, there’s no in between. I guess in fairness I’m the idiot though, its fairly standard for any devoted fans to assume what they love with disappear with any hint of change – and sometimes they’re right – despite change being constant and inevitable, so I guess that’s how it goes. The world spins and we all move on.
Yes. The problem is that Vaughters does not really understand the business model for cycling (or doesn’t care).
A simplification (but more-or-less true):
Race organisers mostly only just cover their costs. They rely on the goodwill of the local community which allows them to use their roads. They do not pay for the roads or the policing costs. In return, they are obliged to have the race shown on free-to-air television.
John
I think Vaughters understands the model well. He just believes he can tweak it into a more “professional” mode, which might turn off many current followers but align it more closely with the rest of the pro-sports market. For better or worse. At certainly for worse for me…
Sorry, but I disagree. Both Vaughters and Plugge seem to believe that they will be provided with the roads for free while they can charge for access (either at the roadside or on television). That really is not going to happen. There is a reason why ASO spends all its time talking to politicians (they control access to the roads) and none of it talking to Vaughters. A hard truth is that the teams are replaceable but the races are not.
Note: in golf, motor-racing etc., the venues are substitutable. That is, changing the venue has little does not much change the outcome of the sporting event. This is also true for tennis (despite differences between grass and clay). That means one venue can be replaced with another. Cycling does not work like that so we can not have the kind of race series Vaughters wants.
As an aside, and a long way from the Ardennes, it does look as if the One Cycling venture has stalled and is on the verge of collapsing.
@The Inner Ring – I haven’t seen anything directly implicating One Cycling, but it does stand to reason that it will not get as much attention as the other Saudi sport projects like LIV Golf which do actually exist.
As I understand it Liv golf is on the verge of collapse, hardly a signal that One Cycling is close to reality. Getting back to the Ardennes, I do think some races could be better marketed and perhaps the distribution of broadcast rights for them could be streamlined. I’m not sure that GCN was actually viable long-term, but the viewing experience was 1000% better than watching Fleche with Bob Roll stumbling through commentary from thousands of miles away. I can’t imagine that someone new to cycling would watch and think “now this is a great product, I must see more!”
The Other Craig and Cycling Coverage.
I think some points are worth making. First, the US market is actually quite small (in cycling terms). And the key problem in the Britain and the US is that free-to-air broadcasters (mostly) do not want to show the races.
Second, the race organisers sell the TV rights to their individual races. Broadcasters must approach each race organiser. (Think football where each competition [Premier League, FA Cup, Champions League, Serie A etc.] sells the TV rights to their competition). In practise, ASO, RCS and Flanders Classics own must of the calendar between them. ASO are pretty good at arranging TV rights, the other two are less good. In particular, RCS seem rather uninterested in getting their races shown outside Italy.
John – I understand the way the race coverage is distributed, which is exactly my point. I think it could be done better if it wasn’t left to individual organizers. F1 and the Premier League have done an excellent job of marketing in the US, and the US cycling market used to be bigger. Mostly for selfish reasons, I’d like the approach to be more coherent. On the other hand, I think you’re basically saying that there’s little incentive to go after the US market because Americans just don’t care, and that’s probably true.
Sorry, maybe I wasn’t clear.
Football rights are also sold by different people: the premier league and the champions league each sell their own rights. Serie A in Italy also sell their own rights. Even within England, the rights to the FA cup are sold seperately from the rights to the Premier league. And within England, the Premier league have been forced to make two separate packages of matches available to different broadcasters. If you support a particular team in England, you need access to 3-4 broadcasters to view all that team’s matches (played across three/four different competitions).
Maybe I said it badly, but cycling being in different packages is not very unusual for European sports. Nor is the fact that teams are in different competitions with different broadcasters for each competition. This seems unusual for US sports, because they are not organised like this. National governments solve the problem (partly) by mandating some events are on free-to-air television to which all have access.
For those people wondering what Vaughters, Plugge and One Cycling want, it is worth looking at the course design for the Tour de Suisse (which has just been published). The race has been reduced to a 5-day race, with each stage run on a circuit. Many people (including me) feel that the race has been completely butchered.
Note that this year, for the first time, the race is organised by Flanders Classics. They believe the cycling calendar should be mostly one-day races run at the weekend (e.g. what Vaughters and One-cycling want). Personally, despite all the criticism that ASO receive, I believe that they have been excellent custodians of the historic races and the traditions of the sport.
oldDAVE
Appreciate the links and took the time to read them.
I agree with the rest of the comments, but the articles put the finger on the most sore spot in cycling today. The races and calendar are, to a large extent, run in a hodgepodge manner with little clarity or sense unless you’re a die-hard fan. At the same time, some teams are becoming intensely professional and highly cynical (most notably, of course, though not exclusively, the UAE and other nation-financed horrorshows). In the end, this clash of cultures—call it amateur hour versus limitless capitalism, if you like—will eventually come to a head. I don’t have a solution, but this conflict isn’t going away any time soon.
Its interesting with Flanders. Has it turned into more of a climbers race, more suited to the type of rider who would do well in Amstel or even Liege, or is it just the Pogacar effect? Once he has gone, and his team riding the whole race like the clappers has gone, and there is no longer a requirement to put out 7 watts per kilo up the climbs in the last 50km, will it revert to normal or will it remain the same? You can’t put the genie back in the bottle as they say.
It would be nice, if maybe logistically or politically impractical, if races could be mixed up a bit more. A Flanders with a few less climbs in it one year, a few more the next. Amstel having 10km of flat at the finish some years. Fleche ending at the bottom of the Mur one year, at the top the next and over the other side the year after that! And Liege with differing amounts of hills in the final 30-50km. It would keep everyone guessing a bit more and might stop races becoming pigeon-holed.
Yeah – the genie’s not back in the bottle – more climbers will come to Flanders and lighter riders will come to Roubaix now the tyre width has seemingly levelled the playing field. Same with ultra fast starts, now the new carb-intake routines and better bikes have made maintaining high watts for hours on end possible, why would the strongest risk coming into finales with more riders than they have to by riding conservatively?
Things do have a way of being cyclical and maybe more riders will reach higher levels meaning older tactics return as it becomes pointless shredding your team only to end up with a 100-person peloton in the last 30, but I’m not convinced this will be the case as cycling has also always had standout athletes in each generation and unless they get lazy, it’s hard to see why they’d not adopt Pog/MVDP/carb-era tactics so they arrive in the finales with as fewer rivals as possible?
TBH I don’t think it will be a bad thing in the long run and it will mean overall more types of riders are now able to win more types of races, despite how the Pog-anomaly may make it seem, and the sport overall will adapt as races look to find a place in this new normal.
We have races that are currently basking in the sun of Pog turning up and making a legend of himself on their roads but that won’t always be the case and I would expect those organisers are already looking for what next, whether they pull back to chase a wider group of riders who might win or go the opposite way in a contrary bid to make themselves loved as an outlier to the prevailing winds. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next.
I’m not sure I understand “TBH I don’t think it will be a bad thing in the long run and it will mean overall more types of riders are now able to win more types of races”.
We’re discussing that Flanders is now, kind of, a climbers race. And you have suggested that wide tyres may mean you don’t need to be built like an outhouse to succeed in Paris-Roubaix. So if climbers/lighter riders already dominate hilly one day races and grand tours, how does barring bigger riders from winning the only remaining big races left open to them and enabling climbers to win everything mean that more types of riders are able to win more types of races? It would appear the opposite is true.
Don’t worry, the Ronde isn’t more of a climber race today than it’s been for most of his long history.
And it’s debatable if it was less of a climber race, say, a dozen of years ago… only because the 2-3 historically superior champions of the moment were more specialised and heavier types.
I’m not worried as such, and OldDave might be right. It would just mean the pool of potential winners would be narrower, rather than wider I would have thought.
Its a tricky one with the Ronde. I think what our esteemed host is saying is pretty much true. You could argue under the current conditions, incorporating a combination of the course, how races are ridden now and the specialisms of the current top riders, that even riders as relatively not that big and exceptionally good as Van Aert and Pedersen are priced out of the Ronde. But its maybe too early to say if this is just because Pogacar and Van der Poel are so exceptionally incredible at bursting up short, steep hills, or if thats how the racing on this course has now evolved and settled to. I think its such an incredibly hard course ridden so incredibly hard that its basically last man standing, and if you have a handful of exceptionally strong riders the course slightly favours the lighter ones as long as they are as good as the heavy ones! If in future there are a relative dearth of exceptionally strong lightweight riders who can handle 260km and the fight for position then 75-80kg riders who can will filter back to the top.
I’m not sure if much if that makes sense.
This is a good point Richard S – but it seems like Gabriele has kindly answered for me in the most part so I won’t bore any further. I feel like there are two ways to see this question dependent on your own your own and both are right?
In Jasper Stuyven’s own words, no 80kg rider like him can hope to win it now. Maybe that’s too exclusive but it’s no longer the preserve of a Tom Boonen-like rider.
Yeah, but, come on, how many 80 kgs riders used to win it before the Boonen-Cancellara-Sagan era, three absolutely exceptional riders under any respect?
I think that before them Tchmil, at some 75 kgs, had been notable as the bulkiest one in well over two decades, most winners sitting around 70 kgs – some of them even. including iconic ones, below that mark.
I really fail to see any notable change once you open the scope beyond the range of a handful of totally and evidently peculiar athletes as Boonen, Cancellara and Sagan… or Pogi and Remco.
It’s a race that’s out of reach for some when it was more open to all before. Arnaud De Lie (at 100%, no bad luck etc) for example can win the Omloop but the Ronde right now?
I can’t see De Lie winning De Ronde because he’d need to step up quite much when riding pavé Classics is concerned, and not due to his physical build. Barring a breakthrough 2nd place winning the bunch sprint behind van Baarle at Het Volk when still 20, he’s now struggled for years to get a mere top-5 in the more selective cobbled races. He’s still incredibly young but the obstacles he faces are the same as if he had raced 10 years ago. Maybe he’s just a different kind of rider, but as he’s Belgian… or he simply needs more time.
A different question is that these races don’t look open because they’ve become so terribly selective, but it’s not a weight contest, in neither direction. It’s just that Pogacar has been pushing a forced selection which *prevents precisely* the kind of tactical stalemate which allowed Nuyens’ or double Devolder’s victories, despite of which Cancellara and Boonen still won 6 editions in 10 years.
However, these have always been race like “strongest takes all – or pick your random lucky man”.
Great racers with excellent qualities to prevail at the Ronde never made it, think Vanmarcke, Flecha, van Avermaet, Hoste.
Whereas, just the most recent example (none else available), Asgreen beat MvdP but could as well never win this and nobody would have thought it strange.
In fact, if you ask me if I can see on day Van Aert or F. Vermeersch or, say, Hagenes or Segaert, or even Ganna, taking an edition where, say, Remco crashes (hope not!), Pogi doesn’t start and MvdP finds himself too far back due to a flat, well I can’t see that as utterly impossible just because of their weight, i.e., I am not seeing them being beat by Gianni Vermeersch or Teuns only because the latter are among the lighter contender in recent years.
Yes, the new finishing circuit has made the race much more difficult for heavier riders to win. When the finish was at Meerbeke, there were only (if I remember correctly) two climbs in the last 30km. And when Merckx first won, Flanders only had two cobbled climbs, neither were near the finish. It now has 16 climbs concentrated heavily on the last two hours of the race.
Inrng’s stat is *just a little* ROTFL skewed by the presence of Pogi and Remco (plus their weight for the Classics being actually unknown, but let’s leave this aspect aside).
Just check the top-10, or top-20 etc. and everything goes back to norm as in previous years.
By the way, lighter types always could have their say at the Ronde, think Argentin, Criquielion, Fondiriest, Bugno, Bartoli, Vandenbroucke, but also the likes of Leukemans, Dekker, Nuyens himself not being a giant… further back I dunno but I think Rooks or Phil Anderson were middleweight types like Pogi.
Just to follow up, here are the last 7 years of Flanders podia, if Pog were excepted.
26: VdP, Remco, WvA
25: Mads, vdP, WvA
24: VdP, Luca Mozzato, Nils Politt
23: VdP, Mads, WvA
22: VdP, D van Barle, V Madouas
21: K Asgreen, VdP, GvA
20: VdP, WvA, Kristoff
Flahutes, nearly all (albeit Lamborghini driving ones … or one), but not totally out of reach of the Madouas and Mozzatos in the peloton when they’re on their day. And certainly not out of reach of freaks like Remco. But this is Flanders, that seems about right. So I think perceptions are being skewed by Pog. And while I’d love to see some variety in the course year to year (bring back the Grammont for one) does anyone seriously think that that would change the outcome of the last few years? If anything MVdP would be undisputed and predictable King of Flanders, so Pog actually mixes it up a bit. When Pog retires, normal service and all.
Or will it? Who are the heirs to WvA, VdP, MP? OTOH we know the heir to Pog, and he’s only 19.
One could argue that pavé Classics are really a “small window” in a season-long calendar where most Classics are actually of the “Ardennes” type.
But truth is that cobbled Classics have strengthened their overall identity thanks to the work by FLCL (which in the middle term had a positive impact also on those which they don’t organise) but also because we had some exceptionally gifted athletes of absolute historical level which specialised on those races or anyway focussed a lot on them (Boonen-Cancellara-Sagan surronded by classy rivals like Flecha, Pozzato, Hushovd, Vanmarcke, Ballan etc., then now the two VANs plus Mads… and Pogi) , bringing the limelight also on the minor ones which became legitimate objectives and found value in UCI categorisation (recently quite skewed towards the French and Belgian races).
Nowadays Waregem, E3 or Het Volk enjoy nearly unprecedented prestige, when they had long been just prep races, dress reharsals or small change to keep secundary teams on the scene.
OTOH other Classics which had belong to the World Cup look a bit “lost in calendar” (or disappeared for good).
While the likes of Argentin, Bugno, Fondriest, Musseuw, Vandenbroucke, Bartoli, Bettini, Thcmil etc. raced all sorts of Classics often with high ambitions, many winners of the hilly Classics 2005-2020 barring perhaps Gilbert look less “charismatic”, especially for the greater public. Many look like “minor GT contenders” who find in Classics a consolation prize of sort. It’s not exactly like that, of course, but there’s an issue of “identity”, so to say.
The cobbled classics are a long window, from the Omloop to Roubaix. It would not be what most people want but if calendar reform happens any outside consultants would decree half these races should be binned as they take up too much of the calendar, take place on the same roads and Belgium is already a saturated market.
But “Ardennes” as a label identifying a type of race might (have) include(d) most opening one-day races in March, besides April of course, then also August and September. And October.
It’s more about identity I think.
However, just 20 years ago or so the cobbled Classics were a 3-days window, Ronde, PR and GW. You can check easily how not winning any of those meant a failed season no matter if you got Het Volk or E3 along the way. This stayed like this through most of the Boonen era, too, it was him who started a mentality change.
Have WVA and MVDP ever raced the Fleche? And if not, why?
Seems like an easy win for them, unless Pogacar is there.
The climb is too steep for them and the course is too hilly, this year’s version especially was harder from the start. Don’t think they’ve done it or will.
Slightly off topic, but both amusing and a bit concerning. Despite it being absolutely clear that WVA had no intention of competing in Fleche, Google’s AI was convinced otherwise.
Here’s the Danish original. 10 minutus ago. It’s not the first time I’ve seen various AI engines generate complete hallucinations….
“Wout van Aert (WvA) deltager i La Flèche Wallonne 2026, hvor han betragtes som en af topkandidaterne til den ikoniske afslutning på Mur de Huy.
Her er nøglepunkterne relateret til Wout van Aert og La Flèche Wallonne 2026:
Dato: Løbet afholdes den 22. april 2026.
Rute: Løbet slutter traditionen tro med den stejle stigning, Mur de Huy.
Konkurrence: WvA skal kæmpe mod andre topryttere om sejren på den stejle afslutning. “
Thomas
Just like when ChatGPT last year—during the Vuelta (!)—predicted a certain win for Pogacar (!). It’s funny and somewhat comforting that AI loves its hallucinations, but also a bit scary that many believe it will soon replace a lot of human effort.
They (and you) probably know better than me, but I am still not fully convinced. 😉
For example, going back to the TdF 22 stage 4, WVA dropped the whole peloton on a climb of almost similar length and slightly less stepness, but also with double-digit gradients. At least, back in those days, I think he could have done it.
The Flèche is famous for the finish but it has two previous times up and more climbs along the way and it’s a 2m45s effort while in Paris the Rue Lepic in Montmartre is around one minute during an almost flat stage. A top-10 for Van Aert and Van der Poel could be attainable but can’t see how they win.
I appreciated the map to lead the article with characteristic SNCB (Belgian Railways) Bs liberally scattered around. For those seeking rest from tough cycle touring in the region try the restful and picturesque intercity trains from Luxembourg to Liège or Luxembourg to Namur. They are very cheap too – and free within Luxembourg.
The Ludwig photo illustrates perfectly the massive build of many riders from that era. Was it weights or something else.
@Richard S
Re: riders’ weight. Let me insist. *No rider over 75 kgs* had ever won the Ronde for over 20 years when Boonen got his first one. And I just didn’t check the decades before because it’s complicated with data and I don’t have a mental image of many riders back then, but I recall Raas, Kuiper, Planckaert, Godefroot, Pollentier etc. being no bulky giants, whatismore in an age where pro cyclists were less obsessed with low weight.
De Vlaminck and Merckx were the big guys, both under 75 kgs, and both *quite much classy* may I say, so one might suspect that they won “despite” their greater weight, in a sense.
So it’s not “this” course or “these” athletes. It’s *this race*.
Of course the Boonen era re-shaped racing (there was a pending question about champions who reshaped racing, well, Boonen was one, although in his very specialised field).
But *that* was the personal exception, soon intertwined with Cancellara: a decade long or so, in a history of over a century (with many changes, obviously).
And if you recognize Boonen and Cancellara as exceptional athletes, out of most parametres (think Indurain in GTs), the only others who really took advantage of the circumstances were Sagan and Kristoff, for their single wins.
Moreover, if you don’t count Boonen & Cancellara, you’ll easily discover that from the year 2000 to MvdP’s first in 2020, even during that supposed exception, the rest of winners averaged 73 kgs.
Was the race more open to different physical types? Not much. You gained a Kristoff (Sagan would have made it all the same); but you lost the Bartoli, Bugno, Sørensen, Van Petegem… as Nuyens was the only winner at 70 kgs or below between Van Petegem 2003 and Bettiol 2019.
Actually, the extreme specialisation implied that most riders winning or podiuming really sat in a very thin layer of physical types, the vast majority belonging exactly to that 72-73-74 kgs average: little variability with very few scattered points.
Presently, there’s still more variability also *in favour* of heavier riders, because Politt or Pedersen can actually podium at over 75 kgs *without being* sort of top class in historical terms, something nearly impossible before Boonen changed these races.
Look: the average weight of all the athletes who podiumed (to have a decent sample) at the Ronde 2020-2026 is exactly 73 kgs *including Pogi and Remco*. That’s exactly the average weight of winners since 2000… if you don’t count Boonen and Cancellara (who’d bring that to 74).
I think it should be now all a little clearer…
(Or not? ^___^)
I bow, as ever, to your greater investigatory vigour.
Same to the clarity of your answer (unlike mine) to oldDAVE above re: extracting value from the sport as entertainment.
Apologies, my first reply was poor in hindsight and you were right I did not correctly represent the 80% figure. Enjoyed reading this weight debate.
How reliable are reported weights of cyclists, particularly the most elite? Seems that would be a closely guarded number, along with power.
Also not implausible that teams or racers might intentionally under- or over-state their weight by 1-2 kg, or more, for competitive reasons.
One of the most ludicrous examples among non-athletes is US president Trump, who appears to be morbidly obese (BMI well over 30), yet has reported his weight as 215 pounds (97.5 kg)!! Side views of Trump are rarer, but it’s hard to un-see.
Unreliable, of course, for example, based on team insiders’ comments, I’m pretty sure Pogi raced this season’s Classics at a weight above the one he declared for previous seasons *in the same races*.
Yet, a broad enough sample, like tens of athletes across decades, will work decently enough all the same.
The reported weights on PCS are unreliable, particularly from the past. A big problem is they do not allow for changes over the season (Pogacar says he weighs 65-66kg in the classics and 63-64kg at the Tour). Nor for changes between years (some riders can gain or shed a lot of weight over their career).
@oldDAVE
I might say that your comment on the Simpsons (always appreciate this quote) applies also to the mantra of JV & C. Always the same complaints about teams not making enough money, the environment being not stable enough, the public not being squeezed enough money, and so on, no matter what’s happening in, say, reality.
Where the reality of cycling, to me, is its top level but also its core countries where the roots of the sport as a mass, shared, social event & practice can still be found.
Those people think about cycling as a globally sold video product (the AI will soon provide something better for that).
To put it simply: look at cycling now. Are big teams getting more money or less? Is it true that the environment is less stable than in other sports? One should check structures, not just brands. Some football teams keep the same name but are a totally different organisation, and it’s not like in football no teams ever went bankrupt in the last couple of decades. F1 might look stable for a handful of top teams, but is it for races, too? And are we so very sure that the public of cycling isn’t facing more and more economic pressure, often an exaggerated one, in order to watch the sport in so many different countries? ( more recently in key ones like Italy, the Netherlands and Spain ). Actually, it’s really the pressure of strictly commercial perspectives which more or less threw in the bin a couple of decades of public investments and hard work for cycling as a broader phenomenon in the UK.
So, no, I give a look at the sport and the CN pieces look like an outdated agenda focussed on vested personal interests of some very specific groups of influence.
Know what? Why these guys full of good will and deep in the know just don’t focus on the social context they really understand better and, for example, begin with a modest proposal to make USA cycling great again? Show us the change and prove it works. Despite a huge and powerful industry, *that’s* the unstable context. Go on and build a collective project that shows the world how things could work. Or is their plan just overtaking what others have built thanks to very different criteria from what they defend, and then just mine out all the value they can?
As for grassroots, it’s not like they’re always struggling by default. Until the 90s and first half of the 10s they were quite fine, although the latter decade showed several issues already.
Now, well, what do you think is it like PRESENTLY, is it more little races being shut down or big teams? Is it more WT devo draining talent or local structures nurturing it and then receiving proportional economic support from above? Is the overall number of juniores growing or declining? Do you feel that the general trend is the sport *staying* mass or going *towards* being niche? Where do you feel that the pyramid is trembling, above where top teams sit, including JV’s, or rather at the lower Pro tier?
It’s a real shame that in a moment where contingent circumstances created absolute bonanza for most WT teams with crazily increasing budgets and huge sponsors jumpin’ in, well,what’s their proposal? Weeping about wanting more and more money for them themselves, and *not even a single line* on how to *materially* and *specifically* distribute it to be shared through the rest of the system. Oh, wait wait, how was that theory? The wealth will just flow down drop by drop *naturally* creating collective welfare dor everybody, yeah yeah, just that same approach which has shown it works exactly like that both in a global scale and in Western countries themselves, starting with the USA.Sure.
In the current age and times saying that the problem of the sport is the calendar (hugely clearer and with a more defined hierarchy than tennis or many others – 3 GTs, 5 Monuments, the Worlds, 7 week-long stage races, the rest is for hardcore fans to discover little by little as they become such), or that big figures don’t clash (they do more than they used to in tennis, not to speak of football or other ball sports), means living among clouds of self-produced delusional fantasies (to get back in theme quoting the title of the piece at least 😛 ).
OR… to be producing a manipulated discourse creating false problems as a means to achieve other ends.
It’s like when these people speak safety bla bla bla, then they block the GPS initiative, irrespective of very serious events the sport has been living under that respect.
Or they never campaigning and lobbying hard on road safety during train, a huge issue not only in Italy but also in, guess where?, Australia or the USA.
No, I don’t take a single sentence of that as sincere or well-intentioned. Because JV isn’t stupid and actually what I applaude of him is the great way he works with his team. But jumping from that to believing he’ll work great for collectivity is like expecting Berlusconi made himself rich, surely he’ll do the same with the country. Or Trump.
Late to the discussion, but after a miserably cold and rainy afternoon of trying to watch the NBA playoffs, which are now seemingly almost all on streaming services (yesterday was Prime, today on Peacock), I wonder if everyone in the future has to be hardcore fans. There will be no more accidental discovery of sports like in the past. Unless your parent are searching and streaming a particular event/game, you’ll never come across most sports. This will happen soon in Europe as it’s happening already to some extent. Attracting new fans to the sport isn’t going to happen without things like Lance Armstrong unfortunately, or packaged crash highlights delivered through Instagram. I think there’s a lot of teeth gnashing here but small races will go the way of the Dodo. I don’t think the sport can really sustain at the current level. I love it and hope I’m wrong but big races will flourish, teams will come and go, and some races will cease to exist.
The last sentence is how it always was, only *some races* weren’t necessarily the small ones. But if the latter all go the way of Dodo, the rest would soon discover how Dodo-based the ecosystem really is. Why else France already having TDF, P-R, Pa-Ni, Dauphiné and owning LBL (or Flèche et al.) would spend notable political efforts in the UCI to foster their really really really small races at home?
Cd, I know how you feel. John mentioned above that American sports don’t work that way, but unfortunately that’s a thing of the past. I now have to chase my American sports teams on multiple subscription services the way I used to have to chase the Premier League all over whatever cable channels they were on. You’re absolutely right that to follow any sport now you have to pay in multiple places. Even the mighty NFL is getting put behind a paywall despite the billions they make from advertising when they show it for free.
You’re totally right, which, I think, shows how the final results depend more on the “model” of the media capitalist venture system around the sport and less on the “model of the sport” in itself. And that’s why Discovery first, then HBO, now Paramount have been forcing transformation on the sport *from* the media system, pushing through thanks to not-sustainable disruptive investments aimed at shaking the tree, then grabbing the fruit and finally cutting the tree to sell the wood.
@John
RCS (and FLCL should I assume? But I don’t know as well) looks uninterested in showing their races to a vast public abroad simply because they’ve been *more interested* in cashing in on what they had evidently considered a unique occasion due to the attention peak 2014-2017 – those first exclusive deals on international markets (a strategy actively pursued as such by Discovery) brought undisclosed huge quantity of moneyflow to RCS which invested part of that in participation fees to have great names at the start.
Rather than “being uninterested”, they chose their priority that way.
Wrongly so, IMHO.
I say so because I suspect that when Discovery-HBO renewed the deals, it was for less money, as their commercial approach in itself weakened the products’ future value, which I guess they expected and calculated on.