I think the winner gets abuse because large portion of cycling fans pathologically gravitate towards the runner-up. It could be because the sport has been firmly rooted in the working class and we see ourselves in the plucky underdog rather than the glamorous winner, but I think there's another reason too. Cycling fans in general want to see the hurt and suffering of the main riders pushing each other to the verge of death in a brutal war of attrition. Life is literally on the line, both on the way up, as Tom Simpson tragically learned, and on the way down, something the long history of tragic high-speed crashes on descents makes abundantly clear. Riders like Chris Anker-Sørensen and Thomas Voeckler have cult followings for no other reason than that their atrocious poker faces broadcast their hurt to everyone watching. Cycling is so synonymous with suffering that riders that crash are often both willing and expected to finish the race with broken bones and bleeding wounds. Any worthy winner in a sport like that simply has to be able to out-suffer everyone else, and we cheer for the runner-up because he is ultimately the only man left that can force the winner to dig even deeper.
The theatre of pain is why Paris-Roubaix remains so revered to this day. There is no way you can win that race without being extraordinarily strong, willing to endure lengthy punishment and brave to the point of stupidity on the cobbles. You're either going to get through to the end and be battered and bruised or you're going to crash and be even worse. There's no escape. There's no easy way out. Bleeding elbows and knees, blistered and bloody hands, mud and dust everywhere, including their lungs. They go to war every single year, the sheer hardness of the race whittling away favourite after favourite until they're down to a handful at best. At the end even the most paranoid and skeptical Clinic hermits usually drop some chain lube on their rusty and disused enthusiasm and admit that it was actually a damn good race.
True, unrelenting, visible suffering seems to be a rare thing in winners of stage races these days. There was no war of attrition when the Sky train churned robotically up and down the mountains until everyone had been shelled off. We lauded Nairo Quintana when
he sat hunched and lifeless on the ground at the top of Ventoux and
Romain Bardet's 1000 yard stare and anguished look of pain at the end of the 2017 Tour. But they didn't win. Quintana ultimately only bested Froome on a single stage, the last stage before Paris where Froome's victory was already as good as guaranteed. Bardet was within reach, but the combination of his lacking ability against the clock and fatigue cost him minutes on the time trial in Marseille. Two riders, but far from the only two, who left everything on the road on multiple occasions, yet second best was the closest they ever got to winning the Tour. The robotic, inevitable train of Team Sky keeping the comfortably out of reach every time, inflicting a hurt they seemingly never had to experience themselves.
This year's addition of the Tour has turned up the volume of criticism again because it goes against the very core of what made cycling the best sport in the world. A team funded by a Middle-Eastern oil state is the antithesis of the working class, salt-of-the-earth fighting spirit that keeps riders going at all costs. The winner shedding consistently every single competitor with the very first burst of speed and looking fresh and unaffected after crossing the finish line does not satisfy our demand for suffering, nor does the suffering of others go rewarded when he regularly breezes past the last remnants of the breakaway who have been desperately fighting it out amongst themselves in the hope that they can manage to scavenge some of the few remaining crumbs left in the race.
It offends and upsets when it happens during the crown jewel of the calendar, but this year it has happened in almost every major race on the calendar. I always enjoyed the race, but the year I fell in love with the Strade Bianche was when Wout van Aert literally keeled over on the final climb, too exhausted to keep the pedals turning on the steep incline. This year that beautiful race was over two hours before the finish line was even crossed. The Giro, a favourite amongst the hipsters who feel the Tour gets too much mainstream attention, has long been the Grand Tour to watch for fans who don't like long stretches of dynastic tyranny where one team wins several editions in a row. It has traditionally had stage profiles far less considerate of the riders' well-being than those in the Tour, often helped by longer and steeper climbs than you're likely to see anywhere else. The late spring start regularly brings the kind of weather every fan secretly hopes for to make the race as excrutiating as possible for the guys in it. That race was also as good as decided before the halfway point. So many races this year are being won by a rider who does not seem to pay for his wins in the only currency a lot of cycling fans accept. Those wins weren't honest. It can't be that easy. And so the fans feel like they're owed a debt. They want answers. For many, the only answer is cheating and the only acceptable repayment is the wins being stripped away. Which is, I guess, ultimately why we are even in this particular damp, sweat-stained corner of the internet.
I will say, though, in fairness to Pogacar... He might have fallen well short of my suffering requirements this year, but at least us, the viewers, are no longer having to suffer through the experience of Chris Froome molesting his bike further and further up the road year after year.
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