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Lack of personalities in cycling

This may seem like a stupid question but seeing as I have no answer I have to ask it: 'Why are there so few personalities in cycling especially compared to other sports like soccer and American football?' A lot of former riders have talked about this before but still there is no real answer. Sure we have Sagan but he's pretty much the only one. As I said this might be a stupid question to some but I would appreciate any input :)
 
Some of us with cycling is you may very well have some, but if they don't speak English or don't speak English well, English publications are less likely to cover them. Then different fans are going to give different answer to this as well depending on the type of people/personalities that you are drawn to in the first place.
I'd say Mikel Landa would be one and Contador was (although he's obviously now retired). Valverde has a huge fan base and a large part of it is that we do love his personality. So it really depends on what you're specifically looking for. In all three cases here you have riders who have a varying grasp on English and many times even when speaking in Spanish what they are saying isn't translated correctly. Valverde won't do interviews in English as his English is not very good. Landa's is OK, but not great. Contadors became good by the time he retired. In these cases there is a real language barrier of varying degrees. I'm sure this is true of other riders as well.
 
I cannot understand Madiot when he says that Sagan has a personality while constantly telling how great Hinault was. Sagan's personality is that of a child. Hinault was an adult.

The OP implicitly says it. Sagan's place is at football, not cycling.
 
Many cyclists are natural introverts and tend to be somewhat shy. Especially if they come from rural areas and small towns where time stand still.

I personally like it that way. It's nice to have a sport without too many poseurs and divas. What's wrong with everyday people?
 
Aug 6, 2015
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valverde doesn't have a huge fan base at all. Only in spain really... but I agree when you said he is a very likeable guy.
 
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WheelofGear said:
Many cyclists are natural introverts and tend to be somewhat shy. Especially if they come from rural areas and small towns where time stand still.

I personally like it that way. It's nice to have a sport without too many poseurs and divas. What's wrong with everyday people?

I agree with you. Only the way I see it having a personality is not necessarily being a poseur or diva. It's also being able to speak. I really like the way Madiot speaks, in French, rich vocabulary. He was already like that when he was a rider. I've never seen him as a poseur or a diva. And he's a farm boy! :)
 
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Amazinmets87 said:
Valverde can speak English? I've been told he can't which seemed incredulous. As much time as he spends amongst English speakers you'd think he'd obtain a base level of proficiency due to language osmosis

He's been on a team with (I presume) Spanish as it's "main language" pretty much his entire career. And since it still seems like a lot of Anglos live in Spain - and thus have learned some level of Spanish - he probably just communicates with in practically both languages at the same time.

WheelofGear said:
Many cyclists are natural introverts and tend to be somewhat shy. Especially if they come from rural areas and small towns where time stand still.

I personally like it that way. It's nice to have a sport without too many poseurs and divas. What's wrong with everyday people?

This! Being introverted and perhaps somewhat shy doesn't mean you don't have any personality, it just means that your personality is that of an introverted and perhaps somewhat shy person.
 
Off the road there can be the language barrier that is an issue, but I think that we are more talking on the road, and there are obvious reasons why road cyclists might appear to have less personality then say, track sprinters (runners), soccer players (more specifically strikers who win games in a single moment), basketball players etc. Generally speaking, the best and most famous road cyclists are those who win the general classification, and who do so at the GT's (most specifically the TDF). Now to win, the vast majority of their time has to be spent conserving energy as best as possible, and thus hiding in the bunch. Even with someone like Vino, he would probably only display his racing personality for about 5% of the total race time of a GT. Compare that to a Michael Jordan, who would take every third shot for the Chicago Bulls; much of what he generally did, was in the spotlight. And he'd make game winning baskets, plus many game sealing baskets regularly. GT winners often don't win more than one stage in the very GT that they win, and as they cross the finish line after a 200 km mountain odyssey, they are hardly likely to have the energy to display too much 'personality'. Even when a GT winner wins a time trial; a cyclist crossing the line on his lonesome just isn't going to display the level of personality to the casual sports viewer as a buzzer beating basket, a forehand winner to take a grand slam, or a knockout punch to become the champion of the world.

The casual sports fan will generally relate better to ten minute highlight videos of others sports stars than they will of cyclists. There's a lot more subtlety in the sport of cycling, a lot more complications, which is perhaps why a lot of us, like it.
 
Thanks for the answers and I agree for the most part with the idea that most cyclists are humble and shy and I do think it's nice compared to other sports but I still think we could do with a few Zlatans (if that's not too much to ask), or maybe even some Roy Keanes :eek:
 
Some of us started watching cycling because we were fed up of the cult of personality around those who had turned a limited talent into a loathsome publicity machine, and coverage of sport as though it were conducted for the benefit of its participants.
 
Aug 6, 2015
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many people here confuse humility with shyness. Introvert doesn't mean humble. there are a lot of introvert cyclists that are rude people.
 
It's soooo hard to tell who does or doesn't have a personality, and soooo hard to tell if what you see is real or a facade (didn't Lance look soooo cool when interviewed by Phil-Paul-Bob?).

In general, I feel that tough guys tend not to be very talkative. Endurance athletes are as tough as tough comes. Even in sports that puts bright lights on individuals and sets the stage for rivalries, clash of personalities (i.e. pre-fight build-up), for one Ali (huuuuge personality), you have dozens of Frazier, Foreman (the '70s George), Holyfield...add to that the reluctance to face a microphone when you've dropped school in 8th grade, that your grammar s**ks, and your vocabulary is 200 words max... add a country accent to that and you get '75 Bernard Thevenet. He was soooo bad :eek: . BT was self-conscious, unlike Ribery, who keeps butchering the French language and doesn't care (know?) that people think that he's dumb.

The same debate took place about Tennis not too long ago. I would argue that if we focused more on knowing the players or riders, we would find out that they do have a personality. Fact is, most fans don't care. Unless it's an outrageous, bad boy, and/or over the top personality (Young Sagan, Nacer, Moscon, McEnroe, McGregor, remember Naz :D ?). And some are soooo fake: take off your shirt Ronaldo :D !

The late Scarponi was a very funny guy, Valverde is reknown for his humour as well, I personally like Dumoulin saying things as he sees them, Phinney cracks me up, I don't need a diva screaming "show me the money" to like the sport.

The truth is: we don't know the majority of the riders, who they really are. And most pros like it this way I bet.
 
I disagree with the premise of the OP. I think there are plenty of personalities in cycling at the moment. Not only that, but with modern tech and social media, it’s easier to get an idea of those personalities than ever before. Whereas in the past a cyclist had to pull outrageous stunts like wearing a muscle skinsuit or a centurion’s outfit, or get snapped on the beach by the Italian paparazzi, nowadays you can follow a rider on twitter, Strava, Facebook, whatever, and find out if he likes choc chip ice cream or sushi or Game of Thrones or goes mountain biking in the off season etc.

Even without social media though, I think there are clearly enough personalities in cycling to add sub-plots to races, which is really all we want them to do. The Giro this year was entertaining as much for the different reactions of Dumoulin, Nibali, Quintana to different situations as it was for the time gaps, breakaways and contest for stage wins. And it was a pretty good Giro I thought.
 
Jul 16, 2010
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Philippe Gilbert definitely has a personality, but I suppose he gets less attention of the media outside of Belgium.

Nibali also has a personality, he's always good for some drama. Just recently he called out Froome for riding like a "sprinter".
 
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El Pistolero said:
Philippe Gilbert definitely has a personality, but I suppose he gets less attention of the media outside of Belgium.

Nibali also has a personality, he's always good for some drama. Just recently he called out Froome for riding like a "sprinter".
"Drama"

...
 
Echoes said:
I cannot understand Madiot when he says that Sagan has a personality while constantly telling how great Hinault was. Sagan's personality is that of a child. Hinault was an adult.

The OP implicitly says it. Sagan's place is at football, not cycling.

Hinault as a person was a bully and a racist during his career. Don't know if this is enough to be a personality, but it looks like that.
 
Re: Re:

kingjr said:
El Pistolero said:
Philippe Gilbert definitely has a personality, but I suppose he gets less attention of the media outside of Belgium.

Nibali also has a personality, he's always good for some drama. Just recently he called out Froome for riding like a "sprinter".
"Drama"

...

The sport of cycling turning into Youtube is a living nightmare for me. We don't need drama, we need good racing. :lol:
 
I agree with a lot of what was typed above. Tonton nailed it,Taylor Phinney is a character! I think that cyclist are personalities in their region/country and with their fan clubs, but less so world-wide personalities like other sports, and I'm good with that. Having 22 or less athletes in a small playing arena gives the viewer a much different perspective than having 200 athletes speeding across an entire country. Also, for most of us here on the forum cycling is huge, but to many people cycling is just those weird dudes in tight shorts.
 
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El Pistolero said:
Nibali also has a personality, he's always good for some drama. Just recently he called out Froome for riding like a "sprinter".

It takes more personality \ character climbing on the Astana bus during the 2015 Tour de France as did Froome to talk face-to-face with Nibali.
 
Max Rockatansky said:
Hinault as a person was a bully and a racist during his career. Don't know if this is enough to be a personality, but it looks like that.

I don't know about any racist accusations made against him but since it's now become a very common and easy one to disgrace a person, I wouldn't take it on face value.

As for the bully part, yes I know about the punch against a demonstrator at the 1984 Paris-Nice. Nowadays, he would be demanded public apologies for that. Yet I don't hold it against him. The guys, however legitimate their claims might've been (which Hinault acknowledged) were preventing the riders from doing their jobs. Hinault had the nerves to do it, despite his status.
 
Jun 30, 2014
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Uran is also one of the biggest extroverts in the peloton, but if you don't speak spanish or italian you won't really know that.
I don't mind introverts and shy guys, just don't give me Aru talking like a politician or Sagan's Rocky IV speech after winning the WC in Richmond.
 
I think any perception of a lack of personalities is driven by how we interact with the peloton - by watching races - and what happens in races. In cycling a poker face is a big asset as you don't want your rivals to know when you're on the edge (although you may fake it the other way like Voeckler-type carry on in breaks or Armstrong on the Alpe stage before "the look"). Quintana is a big example of this.

Also riders all wear sunglasses these days which are a type of mask and hide suffering but also make them seem more robotic. In hurling, in the years just before helmets became mandatory, hardly any of the Waterford team wore them, and even the ones that did (like Paul Flynn) didn't wear ones with face guards. The members of that team are all retired but still known as individuals to this day. The Kilkenny team of the same era all wore helmets, and although they were vastly more successful, had fewer members who lodged in the consciousness of the general public the way say, John Mullane did.

Also also in sports like soccer there are usually several goals per game with celebrations of varying types often involving the whole team. A cycling race only has one winner - you get a short celebration at the end with one rider, maybe his teammate a few metres back sticks up his arm too. The rest of the riders cross the line in silence and aren't heard from again. Not better or worse, just different.

So there are few opportunities to gauge a rider's personality during a race itself (bar how often they attack) and interviews are often as content-free as they are in other sports (Nibali saying "we'll see" over and over). Unless you learn about riders a different way ('backstage' videos, books, social media) there's not much to distinguish one from the other.
 

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