Van Aert's Paris Win; Cycling Fatal Concentration of Power; Doping Excuses; Clean Cyclists are Faster; De Marchi Speaks Out

Key Takeaways:

● Tour Finale Sparks Excitement, with WVA “Comeback”…

● A “Fatal” Concentration of Power

● Existential Crisis Coming for Underperforming Teams?

● Is Cycling “a redemption narrative – an arc toward human perfectibility…?”

● New and Creative Doping Explanations

● A Retiring De Marchi Speaks Out on Israel-Gaza Situation

The Tour de France wrapped up last weekend with Wout van Aert winning on an exciting new and improved circuit in Paris, which spiced up the normal final day procession by incorporating the Butte Montmartre portion of the 2024 Olympic Road Race circuit. In what has been a foregone conclusion for almost two weeks now, Tadej Pogačar rolled over the line in fourth place to seal his fourth career Tour de France title, notwithstanding the rare experience of being dropped on the final climb by Van Aert. Race organizer ASO is to be praised for its innovation with the final stage, but the larger narrative buzz around the race continued to be Pogačar’s unquestioned dominance that largely sucked any suspense out of the race.

Exacerbating this “problem” is the fact that many of the sport’s best young challengers are stashed away on Pogačar’s own team, UAE Team Emirates, and just one or two other teams. For example, while Pogačar was romping to his fourth Tour title, his teammates Igor Arrieta, Isaac del Toro, and António Morgado – three of the most talented young riders in the sport and all roughly the same age as Pogačar when he won his first Tour title – were left competing at a low-level race called Ordiziako Klasika, instead of knocking elbows among the tour’s top finishers. (They did claim all three spots on the podium in the Basque race.) Meanwhile, UAE’s other young superstar, Juan Ayuso, was sitting at home and reportedly attempting to get out of his contract – which likely has a massive buyout clause – so that he can challenge Pogačar and others in coming years. Assuming Ayuso is unable to transfer, it will continue to put pressure on the sport to more closely examine the damaging tendency in cycling towards unacceptable talent hoarding – to find ways of preventing the well-funded teams from securing the most talented young riders, and then stifling their development to prevent direct challenges to their existing star riders. After all, consider what we might have lost had Visma-Lease a Bike originally signed a young Pogačar, and not sent him to the 2020 Tour de France in favor of Primož Roglič.

The final stage in Paris underlined American cycling’s split personality. One of the five Americans to finish the race, Matteo Jorgenson, was in the front group, contributing to Van Aert’s win; however, America’s top grand tour hope, Sepp Kuss, finished over an hour behind. The lack of any obvious American star-in-waiting doesn’t bode well for any potential future upswing of public interest in the U.S. market. And possibly making the development of future stars even more difficult is the fact that one of two WorldTour teams registered in the United States, Lidl-Trek, recently saw Trek sell a majority stake in the team to German sponsor Lidl. Considering that the team currently only has a single American rider, Quinn Simmons, the immediate effect that this ownership transfer may have on U.S. cycling will be small. However, it signals the lack of appetite from American firms to take control of WorldTour teams and – possibly due to the industry downturn – the lack of bicycle manufacturers in named “constructor” sponsorships. In turn, this is likely to make it harder for talented Americans to be fostered as future GC leaders, since the best talent will be dispersed amongst a variety of foreign teams looking to support their own young stars.

The end of the Tour de France invariably leads to discussion about the teams which failed to win a stage and generally underachieved. The importance of these analytics is critical for the survival of many teams who will undoubtedly face increased scrutiny from their sponsors, with many facing challenges to either rapidly improve with stage victories and high GC placing or risk being dropped altogether by a naming-rights sponsor. This year, the majority of the WT teams failed to feature in a meaningful way as only eight of the 18 top-tier squads won stages, and only a single stage was secured by a wildcard ProTour team (Uno-X, one of the five that were invited). Given the ever-increasing budget size of WT teams, the criticality of the Tour as a marketing objective, and the demand by sponsors for winning performances when sports fans are tuned in for the sport’s biggest event, one wonders if teams like Bahrain, Movistar, and XDS Astana are beginning to feel the heat. Likewise, among the wildcard Pro squads, Israel-PremierTech had little to show for its participation, and the only potentially good news for Lotto is its pending merger for 2026 with Intermarché-Wanty. Only the under-performing French teams – blessed with home-country privileges by ASO and the French press – earned their annual “free pass” on this existential topic.

One story in particular garnered attention in the New York Times: despite a very successful Tour, by most measures, Alpecin-Deceuninck continues to struggle to find sponsors for the team following the 2026 season. As we have frequently reported in the past, this team has been punching above its (budgetary) weight for several years. However, despite its highly visible top stars and the fact that it took three stages wins and spent two days in the yellow jersey, the team is struggling to secure its longer-term financial security. The article cites all the various and well-known challenges of trying to identify, secure and maintain strong sponsor partnerships – challenges that are only too familiar to cycling aficionados and that we have written about extensively – and which continue to confound most teams. Team principal Philip Roodhooft said that the team will be able to continue next year with “a good set-up, but it’s not an ideal situation, and it’s not a sustainable situation…… if you lose 20 per cent of your turnover from your budget, it’s a bad thing, but you can overcome it. But if you lose 50 or 60 per cent — you’re done.” And yet when asked whether Kaden Groves’ unexpected solo win on stage 20 might help his search, Roodhooft replied, “Too difficult to say.” This is a clear reminder that team performance and victories is not the only thing that drives sponsorship interest: it is also heavily dependent on internal corporate personnel changes, general trends in the financial environment, and the vast array of other sporting and entertainment sponsorship opportunities that are widely available today.

The Tour de France Femmes took flight on Saturday with a spectacular sprint win by the evergreen Marianne Vos (Visma-LAB), who had the benefit of a brilliant lead out alongside teammate Pauline Ferrand-Prevot. Vos surrendered the lead on Saturday to Kim Le Court Pienaar (AG Insurance-Soudal), who became the first African woman (Mauritius) to lead the stage race after finishing third on stage 2 behind Lorena Wiebes (SDWorx) and winner Mavi Garcia (LIV-Alula). Stage 3 was unfortunately marred by a late crash which didn’t penalize any top contenders on time, but which could impact the action later in the race. Case in point, the images of Demi Vollering (FDJ) limping to the finish under the aid of her teammates doesn’t bode well for her expected challenge in the high mountains this week. Another favorite, Marlen Reusser (Movistar), abandoned due to illness and a crash on stage 1, while Giro winner Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE) did not start stage 3. We’ll have a full analysis of the race in next week’s edition.

Anti-doping has suffered multiple body-blows in the last two years, but none more bizarre than the recent case of French fencer Ysaora Thibus who successfully argued to the Court of Arbitration for Sport that she tested positive for ostarine after kissing her partner. This would seem to be another entrant for the doping excuses hall of fame, right up there with disappearing in utero twins. Apparently, her boyfriendhad been using the sketchy (and unapproved) muscle-building supplement and allegedly contaminated her through so-called incidental/accidental contact, and Thibus thus avoided a four-year ban. This and other myriad strange antidoping storylines have unfolded as the International Testing Authority (ITA) subsumed testing for a wide swath of Olympic sports, and several high profile doping cases were adjudicated in favor of the athletes. Crucially, tennis cases like recent Wimbledon Champions Iga Swiatek’s and Jannik Sinner’s have lowered the bar for accidental contact and contaminated supplement defense stances. The CAS arbiters’ trend towards ever more “implausibly plausible” theories has raised alarms among antidoping agencies and emboldened antidoping policy critics.

Anti-doping alarmists believe that the science and policy of doping detection is being eroded by procedural shortcomings and a kind of “reasonable doubt” that can sway non-scientific arbiters to decide cases based on beliefs, and not the science itself. Furthermore, testing authorities appear to be becoming gun shy to prosecute cases. Antidoping critics point out that the system, science notwithstanding, is inequitable and prone to assign guilt without due process. Therefore, the recently announced case against current women’s world record marathon holder Ruth Chepngetich – who demonstrated a stratospheric rise in form in the two years prior to her Chicago Marathon exploit before testing positive for a masking agent – will be interesting to watch unfold. Will she claim a contamination defense, or will the high cost of a CAS appeal dissuade her? It isn’t clear whether these cases will lead to changes in the system, but the downslide in athlete faith in it is unfortunately creating mistrust – potentially opening the door wider for alternative views like that of the Enhanced Games: that doping is normal and shouldn’t be stigmatized. As if to underscore that sentiment, the trainer at the center of tennis star Sinner’s defense of “accidental contamination by a steroid spray” was recently re-hired by Sinner.

On the other hand – and while it may be hard to believe that we are quoting The Atlantic Magazinefor the second time in a month (!!) – there is also evidence for cycling’s ability to fine-tune all the myriad inputs to performance, allowing today’s clean competitors to “far surpass the cheating champions of yesteryear.” While there is little or no evidence that today’s top riders are cheating, the question remains on almost everyone’s mind – how is it that today’s competitors are better and faster than ever before; what exactly has changed? According to various experts interviewed for this story, including Alex Hutchison, the author of Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance “this realization of human potential is a triumph of sports science.” The ability of today’s top racers to seemingly get better every year is due to science and technology – better training and nutrition, better equipment, more knowledge of the course and the weather they’re likely to encounter – an entire spectrum of fine detail, that the earlier Sky team was known for practicing as “marginal gains.” In other words, dozens of tiny changes and tweaks here and there can ultimately add up to a significant competitive advantage. Today’s athletes have access to all of this, and the ability to fine-tune and optimize their performance – “a pro cyclist knows exactly where their red line is and how to live right on it.” The author concludes, that in pro cycling today, he is “tempted to see not just a redemption narrative but an arc toward human perfectibility.”

In yet another mainstream media story that demonstrates some of the political tensions simmering just below the surface – and serious sponsorship issues in a sport that is increasingly controlled by parastatal or immensely wealthy patrons, one retiring rider opened up. Alexander de Marchi spoke to The Observer about his time on the Israel- Premier Tech team, which receives minor backing from the state, saying that he is “happy and relieved” to no longer be riding for Israel-Premier Tech, after being on the team in 2021 and 2022. Right now, he said, “I wouldn’t sign a contract with …. the Israel-Premier Tech team…… I wouldn’t be able to manage the feelings I have, to be able to be involved in something like that,” referring to the on-going Israeli activities in Gaza and the West Bank. There has been a sprinkling of small anti-Israel protests during the Tour, including one effort to disrupt the final sprint on stage 11, where an Extinction Rebellion activist got onto the final straightaway sporting a shirt which read “Israel Out of the Tour.” One wonders if there are other active riders out there with similar qualms, but who are afraid to speak up for fear of endangering their economic livelihood. And of course, this is a festering issue that is by no means restricted to Israel; there are several other teams that are backed by state organizations with similar human rights questions or political baggage. Yet, given the spectrum of challenges mentioned above, what team manager is likely to turn down substantial sponsorship packages from these sorts of backers? And this is an issue or challenge that extends well beyond just pro cycling.

# Catch up on pro cycling – and its context within the broader world of sports – with AIRmail … Analysis, Insight and Reflections from The Outer Line. You can subscribe to AIRmail here, and check out The Outer Line’s extensive library of articles on the governance and economics of cycling here. #

Click here to read article