MUSINGS ON THE WORLD OF PRO CYCLING Jersey boys
The fight for the King of the Mountains jersey is stacked against its key protagonists, writes Ned
I was mildly surprised recently to find myself in a discussion with a pair of well-respected cycling journalists, both of whom I count as friends, that started off with a harmless observation and ended in something which almost felt like passionately held and opposing views on what the point of bike racing was. The whole disagreement lasted only a few minutes and we exited the debate on the best of terms, but we had reached a kind of logical impasse.
Though we quickly changed the subject and left it behind us, I’ve found myself reflecting on the issue, trying to figure out whether I’ve been labouring under a naïve misapprehension all along.
The point of contention was the minor detail of the King of the Mountains competition on the final stage of Paris-Nice in March. Heading towards the penultimate categorised climb of the day, the Côte de Peille, the leader of the classification, Mathieu Burgaudeau, was back in the peloton, locked at 44 points, powerlessly watching on as his nearest rival Christian Scaroni got into the day’s various breakaways and started to pick up points with threatening regularity. By the time they went over the day’s only Cat 1 climb, at which he picked up a further two points, he had moved level with the Frenchman, and only needed to come fifth on the Col des Quatre Chemins to win the competition. Or so he might have thought.
The problem was that two GC riders had by now entered the KOM fray: one of them deliberately, the other entirely innocently. Russian Aleksandr Vlasov, the winner of stage 7 and hoping perhaps to finish on the overall podium, made sure that he picked up 10 points to keep his late-blossoming KOM hopes alive with one climb to go. And Remco Evenepoel moved onto 27 points, and mathematically still within reach.
The Belgian then won the final climb, which carried double points (as had every final climb on every stage of the race). That handed him 20 points, and moved him above Vlasov and both Burgaudeau and Scaroni. He’d won the polka dot jersey that his two nearest rivals had been fighting for all week.
Here’s the thing: I bet he didn’t know he’d won it. There is a chance that he only found out when he was waiting for the podium protocol. For the King of the Mountains jersey was never on his radar. Like Jonas Vingegaard, Tadej Pogačar and Chris Froome before him at the Tour de France, Evenepoel was the unexpected beneficiary of a scoring system rigged against “lesser” breakaway riders, for whom the chances of winning the polka dot jersey have been greatly reduced at ASO’s races. I find this a shame, and a distortion.
It is, of course, the case that the best GC riders are the best climbers, and that there is something of a misnomer in the title “King of the Mountains”. That was certainly the contention of my colleagues, loftily dismissing the drama produced by this four-way tussle for a minor classification. But the polka dot jersey is actually a reward for repeated, attacking riding, and it is less about climbing. The fact, as my friends reminded me, that very few riders actually target the KOM jersey (they tend to get sucked into it almost by mistake) does not diminish it in my eyes. Nor would it do so for Thomas Voeckler, Romain Bardet or Julian Alaphilippe, all proud Frenchman who scrapped for the right to stand on the podium in Paris, clad in polka dots. Or, for that matter, Simon Geschke, whose long and tenacious hold on the jersey unravelled on stage 18 of the 2022 Tour de France when the GC riders scooped up the points stacked in their favour. The German burst into tears.
It’s clear that only about six of the 176 riders at the Tour can ever even consider the prospect of actually winning the race. Other riders have to take their chance for glory where it’s offered. It is this detail and variety which makes the race, and on occasion shapes it too, when the separate ambitions of the 22 teams on any given day collide. Such days are the best stages. For me the polka dot jersey is not something to deride. If the old adage is true that it is “not the winning but the taking part” that counts, then the King of the Mountains is the King of Taking Part. And it is bloody hard to win.