The current state of pro cycling - an appraisal

[fmk_RoI]

Re:

Surely this is a parody piece..?

The Roadmap? It's been two years in the writing, you know. Its commitment to anti-doping is such that riders would be required to race every single one of the one day races.

 

[King Boonen]

I had to stop reading the nonsense. It's like they just wanted to regurgitate all of the flawed ideas of the last few years and pretend no-one pointed out the problems.

 

[samhocking]

A lot of Daam Van Reeth in there. Overall, it rather echos SIS's Stephen Moon's opinion of the sport. Fundamentally professional cycling is broken and stuck in an 80's time warp for any modern sponsor who would never look at value in the space on a jersey. I think SIS did some research and they said the jersey space was worthless to them as a company marketing exercise.

 

[fmk_RoI]

I had to stop reading the nonsense. It's like they just wanted to regurgitate all of the flawed ideas of the last few years and pretend no-one pointed out the problems.

It's a nightmare to read. Hard to believe Oliver Duggan was a real journalist. To me, the whole thing comes down to the Gifted Group's idea of six or seven years ago, package the sport as something you can sell to a private equity firm (F1's CVC, for instance) or ASO or Wang Jianlin, leaving all the crap bits with the UCI, and just paying lip-service to anti-doping, believing that imposing a narrative on the cycling season will distract people from doping. All the individual ideas - cut a week of the GTs, impose a narrative on the one-day season - you're right, they've all been floated before (I don't think I saw a single original idea in the whole manifesto).

Between this and Vaughters's impending chamoir, I fear we may be hearing a lot of this nonsense through July. I know there's nothing to really be bothered about, this is going nowhere, none of the key stakeholders are on board, this is something Rapha knocked up after talking to a few dozen mates (and sixteen - sixteen! - people from the Rapha-sponsored Canyon SRAM team), but God I just wish people would propose some practical ideas for once, improvements that actually have a chance of being implemented.

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re:

Fundamentally professional cycling is broken and stuck in an 80's time warp for any modern sponsor who would never look at value in the space on a jersey. I think SIS did some research and they said the jersey space was worthless to them as a company marketing exercise.

A broken sponsorship model and yet Rapha sponsors 20+ of the 50-odd people they interviewed for the Roadmap. Putting their mouth where their money is.