In this week’s AIRmail newsletter, The Outer Line takes an in-depth look at trending cycling news: “Medicalization” of the peloton, 2025 Giro questions, latest Remco rumors killed, athlete privacy rights, team budget estimates, cycling needs to promote its stars…
# 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. #
Key Takeaways:
- TUEs, and the “Medicalization” of the Peloton
- 2025 Giro in Confusion
- Anyone Else Getting Tired of Evenepoel Rumors?
- Maintaining the Privacy Rights of Athletes
- More Team Budget Estimates
- Baseball’s Star Power Sets Example for Pro Cycling
A very emotional Anja Grossmann
A bittersweet moment for all of cycling occurred at the European cyclocross championships in Spain this past weekend. Anja Grossmann of Switzerland decisively won the junior women’s race, and by honoring her fallen compatriot Muriel Furrer ‒ who tragically died at the Zurich road world championships earlier this fall ‒ her overwhelming release of joy and loss on the podium transcended the competition and froze time. Grossman’s emotional win, juxtaposed against the unrealized aspirations of Furrer, underscores how important it is to address critical safety issues with the same vigor and attention as investing in youth and women’s racing development is for the sport’s growth. We hope that the Professional Cycling Council of the UCI, which will hold its end of season convocation shortly, bears this firmly in mind as it discusses strategic initiatives which may determine the sport’s future.
Will the Giro go to Albania?
In the wake of last week’s announcement about the 2025 Tour de France route, its smaller Italian contemporary, RCS Sport, saw its unveiling of the 2025 Giro d’Italia route run aground – unexpectedly postponed from its November 12th presentation to an unspecified future date. The delay appears to be a cautionary tale about over-reliance on foreign starts for much-needed revenue. The 2025 Giro route had been slated to start with three stages in Albania, with the small Balkan country paying a reported €7 million for the pleasure of hosting the race. However, after a recent deal between the governments of Italy and Albania – in which Italy would send certain immigrants to facilities in Albania while their requests for asylum were processed – fell apart, Italian state television has suggested that Albania is attempting to pull out of the deal with RCS. Thus far, RCS is denying reports that recent political events have affected the Albanian start – despite the rumored alternative of a Grande Partenza in Sicily. If the deal is indeed off, it could cause a not insignificant budgetary shortfall, which might endanger any planned start fees RCS had in mind to lure top tier GC contenders like Tadej Pogačar, Jonas Vingegaard, and Remco Evenepoel.
Guillaume Martin has his doubts
A Radio France feature recently focused on the “medicalization” of the modern peloton in light of a wave of new criticisms leveled at the sport’s brightest stars and strongest teams. The feature explored the reliance on therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs, up to 80% of the peloton!), alleged prevalence of drug and blood transfusion micro-dosing, Ketones, medical treatment techniques like carbon monoxide respiration and the role of alleged former dopers in managing and steering the sport today. The producer of the piece doesn’t directly state that these are some of the reasons why the sport has become faster today than it was during the Armstrong era. However, Guillaume Martin was less obtuse, saying that in his first pro years from 2016 he could produce 6.5 watts/kg and compete for wins, but “Today, it is barely enough to get into the top 10 or the top 15.” While thorough, the feature did overstate a few points regarding gene doping (which will be detectable) and Ketone effects (if you can figuratively drink it by the liter), but the key message ‒ that extreme medical treatments and exemptions within cycling’s high-performance programs may be fueling new doping problems ‒ gives pause to consider if the risks to rider health are worth the rewards.
Visma & Ketones
“Medicalization” and the prevalence of TUEs may also become a major stumbling block for anti-doping ‒ according to a thought-provoking opinion published earlier this month which highlights the health privacy rights of athletes. The authors revealed that athlete biological passport (ABP) test data pulled from WADA’s “ADAMS” whereabouts program was used without the proper consent of intersex and transgender athletes to survey their hormone levels and establish athlete eligibility in various sports. The guidelines to use and disclose athlete biometrics and test information are already questionable in anti-doping – for example, announcing a positive test or ABP violation is like publicly disclosing a personal health record. In contrast, this definition of privacy has been a driver for collectively-bargained, non-WADA anti-doping systems in the NBA, NFL, and Baseball. The authors argue that using athlete test data for anything other than the WADA code is unethical and illegal in many countries, which highlights serious and unresolved questions about how athlete health information can be collected and maintained as privacy laws expand, including how this personal data should be deleted after athletes retire from competition.
Remco Evenepoel not going anywhere
Recent transfer market rumors that linked Remco Evenepoel to a potential mid-contract move to BORA-hansgrohe were put to bed by Evenepoel himself, declaring that he will be back with his Soudal-QuickStep team for the 2025 season. HLN analyst Michel Wuyts reported that the interest from RedBull-Bora was very real, with the German squad offering Evenepoel €10 million per year, plus the presence of handpicked helpers from his current team. Soudal-QuickStep boss Patrick Lefevere seemed to confirm the recruitment in a recent interview, where he stated that this was the second time RedBull-Bora manager Ralph Denk has dangled a high-value contract in front of Evenepoel. While Lefevere seemed understandably upset about the offer, the new UCI transfer rules state that a team interested in signing an under-contract rider from another squad “shall inform the rider’s current team of such intention before entering into discussions related to the envisaged contract with the rider,” and ultimately get the approval of the rider’s current team before they can sign a new deal. In other words, there was no real threat Lefevere would lose Evenepoel without approving the transfer first.
Big money INEOS and Manchester United not doing so well in the results dept.
Given the recent UCI discussion of potential budget caps, it is worth noting that the English Premier League is currently in the midst of a two-year trial of its own version of a salary cap system – with new Squad Cost Rules (SCR), which limit player spending to 85% of a club’s soccer revenue and certain other financial requirements. These rules were implemented to “improve and preserve clubs’ financial sustainability and the competitive balance of the Premier League” and they appear to already be having an effect after just ten weeks. For example, the proud, but tiny club, Nottingham Forest, is sitting in third place in the EPL table, while the much better funded team of Ineos owner Jim Ratcliffe – Manchester United – is sitting in 13th place in the table, unable to buy themselves out of trouble as they have in the past due to these new financial restrictions. It may be too early to make predictions about the longer-term impact of the new rules, but at first blush they appear to be leveling the playing field.
Intermarche, Arkea, and Cofidis on about €12 to €15 million per year
A recent posting on X (Twitter) purported to show the current ranges of pro cycling team budgets, supposedly derived from an Instagram posting early this year from a group called fullgazcycling. (That site followed up its own posting with three emojis showing puffs of hot air, and added “these data are estimates.”) It would appear that the group got hold of one of UCI’s annual comparative charts of team budgets – which the organization sends out each year to all teams – graphically showing, without any actual numbers, where the individual team’s budget falls vis-à-vis the other teams. Utilizing specific data points from the few teams that have actually published their budget details from time to time (Ineos and AG2R for example) some observers have taken this information and then tried to interpolate the rough range of other team’s budgets. This latest attempt shows UAE and Ineos at the top in the €55 to €60 million range; Intermarche, Arkea, and Cofidis at the bottom in the range of €12 to €15 million per year; and the remaining teams at various levels in between. Although no one knows the actual data because the UCI has steadfastly refused to release that information – contrary to the practice in most other sports – this is probably a reasonable estimate. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of these numbers: even when you add up the top range estimates for all 18 teams in the WorldTour – €555 million – that collective number is lower than individual contracts recently signed by baseball star Shohei Ohtani, and footballers Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Long contracts for the top riders
The Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series last week and a cross analysis of its broadcast viewership performance provides the most compelling argument to date for why leagues are investing in global talent. The “Fall Classic” re-energized global baseball viewership across the board, with a 67% increase in the U.S. alone (Los Angeles and the New York Yankees own the MLB’s two largest markets), representing an average of 15.8 million viewers per game across the five-game series span. But in Japan ‒ where multi-time most valuable player and Dodger star Shohei Ohtani is sports royalty ‒ viewership averaged 12.9 million over the same period and this captured a significantly higher viewing share of the total Japanese population – despite the morning game broadcast start time. There are similarities ‒ and weaknesses ‒ when we compare this with pro cycling in its current market state today. Our super-teams are similarly locking in “MVP” stars and placing all bets on being competitive at our “World Series” ‒ the Tour de France ‒ and no one would deny that winning the race has fulfilled marketing objectives of team sponsors. Yet, the lack of star recognition outside of Europe and the resultant limited market reach make it seem like the sport will continually be held back from greater global market share and broadcast value. Is the sport doing enough to uplift its stars from a WorldTour perspective, or is it solely the role of the team sponsors?
Star status for the top riders
# 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. #
The post Medicalization, Giro Questions, Remco Rumors, Athlete Privacy, Team Budgets, Cycling Needs to Promote its Stars… appeared first on PezCycling News.
