In this week’s AIRmail newsletter, The Outer Line takes an in-depth look at trending cycling news: NCL dies, Maryland to add women’s event, TDU kicks off season, where is Caleb Ewan? INEOS developments, status of gravel and African racing…
# 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:
- The Death of the NCL
- Maryland Classic Adds Women’s Event
- New Season Kicks Off
- Developments at Ineos
- Status of Gravel Racing
- African Cycling
NCL no more
In somewhat less than shocking news, it appears that the widely-promoted and heavily-invested National Cycling League is dead. The new racing league, initiated in 2022, and financially backed by such luminaries as Kevin Durant and Desmond Howard, had promised to revolutionize American cycling with an exciting new format and calendar. Although its introduction was accompanied by considerable fanfare and attention within the domestic cycling community, the league never really got off the ground. Even its first season was abruptly shortened, and then last spring – after just a single year of formal racing – the league had announced that it would “pause operations for the 2024 season effective immediately as it looks to restructure and rebuild” and that it would “focus on coming back stronger in 2025.” In the process it left numerous contracted riders and staff in limbo mid-way through the cycling season, and generated considerable rancor within the sport. Former pro racer and sports director Michael Creed, in a scathing Instagram post at the time said, “I want to personally thank @nclracing for adding to the scar tissue of the American cycling landscape.” The league’s statement at the time was eerily and frustratingly similar to the “soft touch” diversions we have heard from numerous American road racing and other cycling events over the past several years – a “postponement” or a supposedly “brief hiatus” which basically translates to “we’re done” – and a cancellation of the event altogether. Although the NCL was somewhat controversial from the outset, its formal exit is unfortunate news. It is indeed another layer of scar tissue, and one more sign of just how desolate the American cycling landscape is at the moment.
A women’s event in Maryland
And speaking of the domestic pro road racing scene, the Maryland Cycling Classic, the most significant remaining UCI event on the American calendar, made several announcements today. The race, scheduled for early September, will include a women’s event for the first time; both the men’s and women’s events will be run on the same day and will utilize many parts of the same course. The event also announced several new management additions, bringing in U.S. cycling mainstays Steve Brunner (full disclosure: an occasional contributor to The Outer Line) as executive director and former Medalist Sports chief Jim Burrell as race director. Former racers Bobby Julich and Joanne Kiesanowski are the new competition directors. The event has faced a number of external struggles, having been cancelled in its proposed first two years due to Covid, and also last year, reportedly due to the major bridge collapse in the Baltimore harbor. Nonetheless, it has built a decent audience following and has attracted several WorldTour teams to its first two editions – no doubt helped by complementary calendar timing with the major Canadian WorldTour events. Hopefully, this year, in its third running, the event will find its full footing. But the fact that it is already America’s biggest race puts further perspective on the general U.S. racing environment ; just a decade or so ago, when there were major multi-day stage races with most of the WT teams occurring in California, Colorado, Missouri and Georgia, the Maryland race would have looked like a secondary event.
Sam Welsford won the first two stages
Yes, we know, it feels like the 2024 season just ended, but men’s cycling’s ludicrously long 10-month season kicks off this week with the Tour Down Under. The 24th edition of the six-stage race features a strong start list, with defending champion Stephen Williams returning to battle last year’s runner-up and new UAE signing, Jhonatan Narváez, while former Tour de France champion Geraint Thomas, racing in what is likely his final season, looks to sharpen his form under the hot South Australian sun. While this early-season race has resembled more of an exhibition event in the past, the shift to more challenging parcours and modern training suggests that the racing will be all-out from start to finish – making it far more interesting than in the recent past. It is also now more connected to the rest of the WorldTour calendar, as results in Australia are increasingly predictive of success later in the season. Riders who perform well down under seem likely to be poised for a strong season if recent history is any indicator; every rider in last year’s top five went on to have career years. Interestingly, as every WorldTour race in the United States, including the popular Tour of California, gradually disappeared, the remote Tour Down Under has only gotten more relevant and popular, while also acting as a centering event for the local Australian cycling community. The race seems to have developed a successful formula: keep overhead costs low, and logistics streamlined with a hub-and-spoke model, which sees every stage start and finish from a centralized location. This is an approach which other races would do well to study and learn from.
Where is Caleb Ewan?
One major name that won’t be present on the start line for the Tour Down Under this evening is Caleb Ewan, who is still technically on the Jayco-AlUla roster, but who’s had no presence on the team’s website or pre-season training camps, and who so far has no race program for 2025. Sources close to the situation have suggested that Ewan’s failed attempt to move to XDS-Astana during the off-season has fractured his relationship with Jayco management to a point beyond repair. While the story of the missing and often controversial sprint star has flown somewhat under the radar so far, the longer Ewan remains “missing,” the louder the noise around the situation will likely become. This suggests that a move to a team with available roster slots, and willing to pick up his significant salary (rumored to be €2 million per year previously) could happen before the beginning of the European road season.
INEOS Grenadiers are in Australia, but no sign of Caleb Ewan
One of the teams linked to Ewan are the once-mighty Ineos Grenadiers, who raised eyebrows last week when they announced that they were open to taking on a second sponsor to help fund their return to the sport’s top tier of super-teams. Such a move would have been unthinkable just a few years ago when Sir Jim Ratcliffe, one of the U.K.’s richest individuals, took control of the team. This highlights just how high the financial standard has been raised by some of the other best-funded teams, and what it takes to compete in and win the sport’s biggest races. It also underlines just how far the Ineos team has fallen since the heady days between 2012-2019, when they won seven Tour de France overall titles. A major challenge that Ineos faces in the hunt for additional sponsorship is that its current budget is unrealistically high given its recent performance – hovering slightly above $50 million for the last few seasons. That fact implies that any potentially interested and qualified sponsor could easily become the number one title sponsor of a less-wealthy team (e.g. Lidl with Lidl-Trek or Alpecin with Alpecin-Deceuninck) for a smaller commitment while racking up superior on-road results. This could represent a tough challenge for Ineos.
Times have changed for INEOS and Jim Ratcliffe
A potential reason for the team’s search for additional funds could be the significant investments that owner Ratcliffe is making to turn around the troubled football club Manchester United. A recent report by Sportico underlined the financial pain that Ratcliffe is currently undergoing at United, with the 30% stake he purchased in 2024 for $1.6 billion now worth “just” $812 million, which means his investment has declined 48% in just a year. (The loss of $734 represents an amount large enough to purchase multiple Premier League clubs, some of which are having far better seasons than Man U.) While it would have seemed difficult to comprehend just a few seasons ago, the financial realities surrounding the greater Ineos sporting portfolio could suggest that the team’s long-term presence in the sport may no longer be a sure thing.
Gravel racing – The hot ticket in competitive cycling
Gravel racing might be a hot ticket in competitive cycling right now, and a driver for industry sales, but it may be close to the point of “jumping the shark” given several recent developments. The success and growth of the Life Time Grand Prix and UNBOUND have popularized an elite version of the sport for racers, leading to privateer and team-level sponsorships, with a near fluid interchange of road, MTB, and gravel-focused talent in the races. But what started as a U.S. phenomenon has now reached a crossroads, due to the rise of professionalized European events, bolstered by UCI accreditation and the legitimization of the ongoing annual UCI Gravel World Championship. This is shifting the sport from its North American roots, where it was considered a “sport of the people” – accessible and appealing to a wider community of goal-driven enthusiasts who revel in the challenges brought by UNBOUND and a host of other scenic courses. Those enthusiasts are rapidly being priced out by an increasingly expensive “ticket” of travel costs, entry fees, equipment investments, and time commitments to participate. Simultaneously, the diversification and access to European events by pro racers will likely mean that more top U.S. riders have to refocus across the pond and many European riders may omit U.S. racing from their schedules altogether. Some 30 years ago, this same shift happened when the UCI muscled into MTB racing with its Grundig World Cups, decidedly shifting the sport’s competitive emphasis and cultural focus to Europe, which had the parallel effects of flattening overall licensed participation and mountain bike sales over a prolonged downturn, particularly in the North American market. We may be seeing the same thing in gravel racing.
Not as much money in Gravel yet
At the same time, and by a variety of other measures, the evolving gravel side of the sport still trails a long way behind road racing’s top-heavy WorldTour economics. The recent announcement of the new Gravel Burn race in South Africa, and its highly-touted $150,000 purse demonstrates just how far behind gravel racing remains in terms of the general economics. Described breathlessly as “massive” and a development “that changes everything” in gravel racing, it is worth putting this figure into perspective, even within the sport of cycling. The average men’s WorldTour salary is now estimated to be in excess of $500,000 a year, and the women’s WorldTour, while far behind, is also beginning to grow, highlighted by Demi Vollering’s reported new €1 million contract. And for further perspective, consider that Steph Curry probably makes that much per quarter of basketball played, or Ronaldo per touch of the soccer ball.
Doug Ryder: ‘There’s just a lack of quality at the moment’
A recent interview with Q36.5 team principal Doug Ryder has opened a floodgate of debate over the future of African road cycling and its pool of talent. On one hand, Ryder – who has been a driving force for African cyclists in road cycling through his Qhubeka programs as far back as the ‘00s – now claims that the level of African talent simply isn’t up to par, given cycling’s current demand for high-return sponsorships and the drive for rider points and rankings for team licensing and investor interest. However, his comment, “There’s just a lack of quality at the moment,” struck a nerve with many of the sports observers in the wake of Q36.5 shuttering its development team – one of the last remaining commercially-sponsored programs providing African riders with development structure. (The UCI’s World Cycling Centre programs are still active, however.) This shines a new light on the cutthroat environment of WorldTour racing. However, it also drew ire from critics who claim that African racing is under-invested, and that its athletes are being marginalized in comparison to developed nations’ cycling programs. In more pointed criticism, it was also hinted that some top cyclists have underachieved or failed to thrive in Ryder’s teams – a sore point given Ryder’s recent signing of Tom Pidcock. One thing is certain, with the 2025 UCI World Championships being held in Rwanda, the comments struck an unfortunate nerve and whether one agrees with Ryder or not, the sport is rapidly changing, and it remains to be seen whether Africa gets left behind in the developmental echelons.
The 2025 UCI World Championships in Rwanda
# 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. #
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