Big thread about cycling team management.

[ingsve]

I was listening to the three episodes of the Cycling Podcast labelled "Trapdoor" that looked deeper into the UCI points race and the strategy taken by three teams, Astana, Uno-X and Cofidis.

My big takeaway from listening to those three podcast episodes is how different team management setups can be. Astana had an AI approach that helped identify what races on the calendar would have the lowest hanging fruit in terms of points and set up a strategy for the whole team and season to gather as many points as possible which included putting several riders into top 10s in one day races rather than working for a single leader.

Uno-X has a disadvantage in the peloton by only picking riders from two countries but this also gives an advantage by having huge togetherness in the team and the management helps this by being very supportive, giving everyone space and keeping the team together showing the benefits of strong positive management to push a team further than their supposed level on paper.

Then we get to Cofidis which just comes across as the height of mismanagement that seems to have longstanding roots. they went back to the days of David Millar who had to buy his own equipment to be able to set up his TT bike the way he wanted it. Then in more recent years it just seems like the team was left in the stone age in terms of management. It mainly seemed like they had a bunch of individual contractors who they told to get out and get results without much thought behind it. You had bizarre stories like a rider who was mainly asked to do domestique duties and then he didn't get a new contract because he had not scored enough points.

So because of this discrepancy between teams I thought it could be useful to have a thread to discuss the various ups and downs in team management in the peloton.

This would be to discuss questions like:

• What teams are benefiting a lot from having good management and what is it that sets them apart in your mind?
• What teams are hindered most by poor management and what are the flaws that are more apparent?
• What teams are showing real innovation in management and do you think it is something that will spread to other teams?
• What tactical brilliance or mistakes have you seen in recent races, highlight them in this thread.
• What aspects of management do you feel are more important? The head of the team? Coaches? Specialists? DSes? Others?
  

 

[ingsve]

My initial thought on this subject is that in a world where there are rich teams and poor teams and where riders are more and more concentrated into the richer teams, something like having good management can be a good equalizer. There is nothing inherently that requires money to set up a good management team, that has more to do with picking the right people and having the right attitudes. And being a rich team with high salaried riders does not necessarily mean that the management is top notch.

Cofidis has for example been seen as one of the richer french teams and has had stability for a long time but their management became more and more lacking. I'm sure that are even continental teams out there that are brilliantly run for the level they are at and that likely gives relative results as well.