Like the first cuckoo of Spring, the first cry of "There's no respect in the peloton anymore!" has been heard, just a few stages into the new season.
It's an age-old complaint that, each year, gets uttered by a new aging pro. This time it's the relatively youthful 32-year-old Bling Matthews making the call: "I don’t know what’s happening in cycling these days," he cried after the second stage of the TDU, "there’s no respect in the bunch."
We hear this cry every year, usually several times. Last year we had Romain Bardet linking respect and crashing, as did Caleb Ewan a few years before. Demonstrating that Slovakians don't understand irony, Peter Sagan was calling for more respect as far back as 2015:
It's an age-old complaint that, each year, gets uttered by a new aging pro. This time it's the relatively youthful 32-year-old Bling Matthews making the call: "I don’t know what’s happening in cycling these days," he cried after the second stage of the TDU, "there’s no respect in the bunch."
We hear this cry every year, usually several times. Last year we had Romain Bardet linking respect and crashing, as did Caleb Ewan a few years before. Demonstrating that Slovakians don't understand irony, Peter Sagan was calling for more respect as far back as 2015:
You can add your own examples, I'm sure, there's an abundance of these stories. Question here is this: has the level of respect in the peloton been falling as the years go by or do you think it was always like this?"I want in the group maybe more respect as well OK,. The respect in the group is like nothing. If I speak with the old guys [asking] when Cipollini was in the group or somebody like that, there was lots of respect in the group. Now it's like, 'if you don't brake, I don't brake' and we crash. It's very bad mentally in the group now.
"If I can change this, I don't know, it's a big step."