Racing 2.0
Ned’s relishing where this newfangled style of racing goes in 2023
Sometimes you have to stand still to realise how far you’ve come. I have spent the last four years expounding enthusiastically at where road racing is heading; talking, podcasting, broadcasting and writing about how quickly it has morphed into something different, something shinier and happier. Often I have almost tripped up over my own words in my eagerness to conclude that it just keeps getting better and better. And, as with all subjective judgment calls, the conclusions which I have drawn often feel dangerously close to being hunches, rather than sanguine, evidence-based observations. But here I am at the end of 2022, feeling full of hope for 2023, and full of satisfaction when I look back over another year of racing just finished.
But my feelings on this matter are not entirely fact free: The Road Book cycling almanack, which I edit, is now in its fifth edition, having been started in 2018. The choice of that particular year to launch our project was entirely arbitrary of course (you have start somewhere, and that was as good a time to begin as any). But now, with the benefit of hindsight, it was the year which marked the beginning of the end of the old order; a year which saw the appearance of sudden cracks, which became more and more pronounced throughout 2019, and then a full-on earthquake in 2020.
For starters, it is worth noting that only one British rider has ridden to victory since 2018 at a Grand Tour (and that was Tao Geoghegan Hart’s brilliant, if somewhat anomalous 2020 Giro). In 2018 all three Grand Tours were won by British riders. Simon Yates took the Vuelta, thereby putting right the wrongs of his tilt at the 2018 Giro. Geraint Thomas, supported by the debutant Egan Bernal, slipped into a leadership role with Ineos and glided to victory at the Tour de France as Chris Froome finally relinquished his iron grip on the race in the same year which saw him detonate the Giro with a truly extraordinary attack. In other words, the control that he had exerted over the peloton no longer held sway: he won, but he won differently and at the wrong race. For the first time in half a decade, the “Sky Method” was no longer a guarantee of monolithic certainty. And, less than a year later, he had crashed into a wall, and everything changed; for him, and for us.
Froome’s sudden absence from the front of the race seemed to encourage blue sky thinking. At the 2019 Tour, Thibaut Pinot’s tears when he was forced to abandon the race were all the more bitter because he knew he could have won. Never before, not once, had he been a genuine contender. Likewise, the marauding ride from Julian Alaphilippe was born from a spirit of adventure that was scarcely possible when the black and blue Sky train was still going full steam ahead. His journey of self-discovery showed the way for the subsequent editions of the race which has variously produced impossible results: Tadej Pogačar overturning a colossal deficit on stage 20 of the 2020 Tour to win the race at just 21 years of age. Mark Cavendish returning to winning ways in 2021 and closing in on the Merckx record. And Wout van Aert winning time trials, sprints, green jerseys and almost the polka dot jersey, while at the same time rescuing the fortunes of the yellow jersey on more than one occasion in 2022. Suddenly, everything seems possible.
Not only is nothing off limits, but the pace of change is relentless. We had only just settled into the assumption that Pogačar would win for seven years and more, than we were introduced to the genius of Jonas Vingegaard. No sooner had he claimed the Tour title than our attention turned, quite rightly, to Remco Evenepoel (pictured winning the UCI Road World Champs in 2022) and his much anticipated debut at the race, expected to be in 2024. Evenepoel is a different proposition entirely to the last two winners of the Tour; a rider who doesn’t necessarily have to wait for a mountain stage to hurt his rivals, who will put the fear of the God into them because on any given day if he is minded to, he is capable simply of riding away from them on the flat and winning like no one has won the race since Bernard Hinault.
So, buckle up and relish what we are witnessing.
I am convinced that these last few years will be remembered years from now as a truly golden era. Who’s the best of them? I have not the faintest idea.