THE CYCLING MONEY TRAP
The new Chinese cycling project will need deep pockets to survive
In early October, Global Cycling Project, the all-new, ambitiously monickered Chinese pro cycling plan, announced itself to press and public alike. CEO Tim Kay informed us it would cement a place in the WorldTour post-haste, and that a Chinese Tour de France winner would be in situ by 2025. Overseen by Shane Sutton and Brian Smith (gnarly and avuncular – the dream ticket), the project would reduce air pollution, reconfigure the cycling paradigm, and propel it to the “forefront of Chinese sports”. There would be a big budget sponsor, and they would make hay because cycling is “becoming the global golf”. Then the obligatory charitable initiatives, a network of fans bestowed by sophisticated marketing techniques and investment opportunities in Europe. Does any of this sound familiar? Does all of it sound familiar?
It’s easy to be cynical where cycling’s ‘business model’ is concerned. Notwithstanding the fact that Smith is a good man and that Sutton has a proven track record, history repeats ad infinitum. Few sports are so seductive to middle-aged men, and none are so profligate with their money. Think Oleg Tinkov, Giorgio Squinzi, Gerry Ryan and Andy Rihs. Think of Valentino Sciotti’s masochism, and of poor, bankrupt Romano Cenni’s anguish. Think of Aqua Blue’s Rick Delaney, of Matt Prior and of IAM’s Michel Thétaz. Thétaz, a principled bloke with a thought-through business plan, became a mere spectator as the money ran out.
That lot, and dozens more like them, were all hopelessly caught behind cycling’s financial echelons. Thus, for all that winning images of Team Sky dominate the GCP website’s promo film, it’s tempting to invoke the likes of Nippo (the lesserspotted Japanese cycling project), Coldeportes (the defunct Colombian cycling project), and Katusha. Its pretense of being a Russian cycling project long since abandoned, these days it resembles an expensive plaything for Igor Makarov, its oligarch proprietor.
Why should GCP be any different, and can it garner sufficient cash to buy its way to the top table? Will it unearth a cycling-daft benefactor like Makarov, or will it go the way of all of the above? Will it fly or will it be stillborn, as was Giuseppe Saronni’s 2016 Chinese adventure? A clue is to be found in the anodyne corporate blather on the website. It distils the whole thing down to one simple, irrefutable truth. In appealing to investors, GCP cites a media impact survey undertaken for Ag2r. It concluded that cycling is really, really good for business, and that the Tour – that old seductress – represents some 55 per cent of the team’s media footprint.
And that, in a nutshell, is the crux of the matter. Top-level cycling has often resembled a closed shop, but in its present iteration it approximates a cabal. Ostensibly the UCI run it, but ASO and (for now) RCS own it. That largely explains why there are more French riders than Spanish at the Vuelta, why the Tour wildcards are always French, and by extension why the Chinese are going to need extremely deep pockets. For all GCP’s innovative ideas and well-intentioned flannel, talk is cheap. European academies, social programmes and the like are all fine and well, but money talks, and as of now China has precisely zero world class road cyclists.
History tells us that without the Tour you become yet another failed national cycling project. They’d do well to heed its lessons, and in a material sense that means getting a box office signing under contract, or better still a superannuated French one. What’s Mandarin for Alaphilippe? A fancy website, a revelatory idea, bespoke marketing and sponsorship opportunities, merchandising, retail, corporate this, corporate that, corporate the other.
Cash is king in cycling. The best of luck to them.