- Feb 20, 2010
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I've often used a combat sports analogy here, and that goes in line with my comparison of the dire straits anti-doping finds itself in in terms of credibility to the death of kayfabe in wrestling. You need to have a battle that people will tune in for. The champion needs to be somebody that will either draw an audience who just want to see them, or somebody that the audience will pay to see beaten. If the champion is unpopular, the challengers become more important. If the audience either gets behind the challenger(s), or is simply so full of hatred for the champion that they will cheer anybody against them, that's fine - so long as the audience believes the challenger has a chance. If the challenger wins, then obviously the outgoing champion will be out for revenge and so produces future options for the promoter, especially with a more popular challenger, whose popularity may be supplemented by the goodwill that comes from being the one that ousted the despised champion (see the long-term goodwill received by Alberto Contador for his 2009 standing up to Lance). If the challenger has the chance to win but the champion proves too strong, that's not a problem - it raises new possibilities. "It was so close, I can't wait to see the rematch" is perfect business for the promoter; "well, if that challenger couldn't do it, I wonder who could?" has possibilities, so long as the promoter can find other, credible challengers. But if the challenger doesn't have the chance to win, why would you watch it, if you're not a fan of the champion? Obviously a wrestling promoter can manoeuvre themselves around that by the judicious use of smoke and mirrors, but for legit sports, that is not an option.
Sky's position as the dominant force in cycling is not in and of itself inherently bad, so long as people feel that the opposition is being given a fair chance to compete, and so long as people have some kind of belief in the opposition's ability to overcome that strength and thwart that domination. If Raymond Poulidor was losing the Tour by dropping minutes to Anquetil on every single climb and TT, he would never have become the popular figure he became. The great story with Poulidor was that he was good enough to beat everybody else, and he was good enough to challenge Anquetil (and later, Merckx) but never good enough to triumph on the day - but always close enough that fans would become invested in his struggle. Even in the Lance years, there were years where Ullrich was seen as a legitimate threat. That's why the 2012 Tour was perceived so negatively, because the only rider who could feasibly have threatened Wiggins for two weeks had his wings clipped.
The problem is, the way this decision has played out - and especially in view that it was seemingly going nowhere for months while Froome was riding, then was resolved in less than a day as soon as his right to ride was challenged - means that for many fans, they do not perceive that the opposition is being allowed a fair fight. They've watched Froome run roughshod over the competition brazenly for years now, and there was already the perception among many that he and his team enjoyed preferential treatment. There are many types of villains, and Sky and Froome fall into several categories at once. My wrestling analogy is a good one to use here. There are many types of bad guys in wrestling. There's the monsters, of the classic super tall or super sized kind, whose allure is due to them overpowering the underdog good guys and seeming invincible. They don't need to cheat, since the storyline is thousands of years old, David and Goliath style, but the fans want to see the underdog defeat the giant. There's the cowards, who will seize underhand advantages, poke the opposition in the eye, use their sidekicks and teammates to gain an advantage and find ways to escape even against stronger adversaries, so that the fans want to see them finally get theirs. There's the corporate bad guys, who enjoy explicit favour, being given favourable match-ups and the odds stacked in their favour, so that the fans want to see the good guy overcome those odds. And there's the pontificators, the arrogant and self-entitled preachers who tell the fans and their competitors how to behave whilst simultaneously betraying those morals in plain sight, so the fans want to see them get their comeuppance. Sky fulfil all of these criteria at once; they are the most powerful team in cycling by dint of having a super budget and a super strong team, which they complement by buying out competition with lucrative contract offers as well as, in fairness to them, having some good scouts for talents, albeit who sometimes go around pilfering strong riders from other teams' development cadres. They set up at Grand Tours with a formidably strong lineup that would be difficult to beat at the best of times. They then complement this with some occasionally less than morally pure activity, such as racial abuse or airing other people's personal business in public, whilst simultaneously pontificating about the 'unwritten rules' and attacking those who do not heed the code, such as the shoving game with Fabio Aru on Mont du Chat last year, or criticising Movistar in the press for daring to push the pace on a descent and not stop when a poor descender couldn't handle the pace (even though that rider wasn't on Sky's team anyway and the act only served to strengthen Sky's control of the race). And finally, the favourable routes of 2011-12 and the way in which the UCI - for a large period of their domination led by somebody who was on the original board of the holding company behind Team Sky - and ASO have conducted themselves for large parts of the last few years has led to the belief that they are favoured by those in power also; with WADA now backing Froome over their own rules, admittedly under threat of legal action that they may not have been able to successfully withstand, there is the perception that they tick the box for the corporate champion too.
A challenger can overcome a monster villain. A challenger can overcome a cowardly villain. A challenger can give a moral pontificator their comeuppance. And a challenger can beat the odds against a corporate hand-picked villain. But a lot of people are not going to be able to believe that a challenger is going to overcome a cowardly, moral pontificating corporate hand-picked monster, and so unless you like rooting for the overdog, it's hard to justify putting the money down to see that fight.
Sky's position as the dominant force in cycling is not in and of itself inherently bad, so long as people feel that the opposition is being given a fair chance to compete, and so long as people have some kind of belief in the opposition's ability to overcome that strength and thwart that domination. If Raymond Poulidor was losing the Tour by dropping minutes to Anquetil on every single climb and TT, he would never have become the popular figure he became. The great story with Poulidor was that he was good enough to beat everybody else, and he was good enough to challenge Anquetil (and later, Merckx) but never good enough to triumph on the day - but always close enough that fans would become invested in his struggle. Even in the Lance years, there were years where Ullrich was seen as a legitimate threat. That's why the 2012 Tour was perceived so negatively, because the only rider who could feasibly have threatened Wiggins for two weeks had his wings clipped.
The problem is, the way this decision has played out - and especially in view that it was seemingly going nowhere for months while Froome was riding, then was resolved in less than a day as soon as his right to ride was challenged - means that for many fans, they do not perceive that the opposition is being allowed a fair fight. They've watched Froome run roughshod over the competition brazenly for years now, and there was already the perception among many that he and his team enjoyed preferential treatment. There are many types of villains, and Sky and Froome fall into several categories at once. My wrestling analogy is a good one to use here. There are many types of bad guys in wrestling. There's the monsters, of the classic super tall or super sized kind, whose allure is due to them overpowering the underdog good guys and seeming invincible. They don't need to cheat, since the storyline is thousands of years old, David and Goliath style, but the fans want to see the underdog defeat the giant. There's the cowards, who will seize underhand advantages, poke the opposition in the eye, use their sidekicks and teammates to gain an advantage and find ways to escape even against stronger adversaries, so that the fans want to see them finally get theirs. There's the corporate bad guys, who enjoy explicit favour, being given favourable match-ups and the odds stacked in their favour, so that the fans want to see the good guy overcome those odds. And there's the pontificators, the arrogant and self-entitled preachers who tell the fans and their competitors how to behave whilst simultaneously betraying those morals in plain sight, so the fans want to see them get their comeuppance. Sky fulfil all of these criteria at once; they are the most powerful team in cycling by dint of having a super budget and a super strong team, which they complement by buying out competition with lucrative contract offers as well as, in fairness to them, having some good scouts for talents, albeit who sometimes go around pilfering strong riders from other teams' development cadres. They set up at Grand Tours with a formidably strong lineup that would be difficult to beat at the best of times. They then complement this with some occasionally less than morally pure activity, such as racial abuse or airing other people's personal business in public, whilst simultaneously pontificating about the 'unwritten rules' and attacking those who do not heed the code, such as the shoving game with Fabio Aru on Mont du Chat last year, or criticising Movistar in the press for daring to push the pace on a descent and not stop when a poor descender couldn't handle the pace (even though that rider wasn't on Sky's team anyway and the act only served to strengthen Sky's control of the race). And finally, the favourable routes of 2011-12 and the way in which the UCI - for a large period of their domination led by somebody who was on the original board of the holding company behind Team Sky - and ASO have conducted themselves for large parts of the last few years has led to the belief that they are favoured by those in power also; with WADA now backing Froome over their own rules, admittedly under threat of legal action that they may not have been able to successfully withstand, there is the perception that they tick the box for the corporate champion too.
A challenger can overcome a monster villain. A challenger can overcome a cowardly villain. A challenger can give a moral pontificator their comeuppance. And a challenger can beat the odds against a corporate hand-picked villain. But a lot of people are not going to be able to believe that a challenger is going to overcome a cowardly, moral pontificating corporate hand-picked monster, and so unless you like rooting for the overdog, it's hard to justify putting the money down to see that fight.
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