No ‘I’ in team

How are we meant to support a cycling team when it has no geographical base, no recognisable team colours and not even a permanent name?

It’s a little-known fact that a legalised brothel in Holland played a small but significant part in cycling history. The full details are recounted on the official web page of Club Diana, just beneath the section entitled ‘Our Mission: Seduce and Pamper!’

Back in the 1980s the husband and wife founders of what was then called Sauna Diana were both cycling enthusiasts. Their sons raced for the local club in Zundert and they ‘found it strange that riders before and after a cycling race often had no decent dressing room and shower available’. So they bought an English double-decker bus, installed a shower and comfy seats, decorated it with their logo and a scantily clad woman and introduced the concept of the team bus to amateur cycle racing at a time when pro riders were still having to get changed in the back of estate cars. The bus proved so popular it was even loaned to other professional teams in the 1990s.

I mention all this because I think it would be fun supporting a team named after a

Dutch ‘house of love’. Certainly more fun than cheering on teams named after kitchen appliance brands, cars, banks or Middle Eastern regimes with dubious human rights records. And yet supporting cycling teams with all the tribal loyalty of football fans has only become a phenomenon of recent times.

Yes, there have been great ‘teams’ in cycling, ranging from the loyal gregarios who supported Fausto Coppi at Bianchi to the ‘Red Guard’ of riders who pioneered the leadout train for Rik

Van Looy, but professional cycling is essentially a team sport for individuals.

While riders each have their responsibilities and specialities, only one of them can cross the line first and receive the winner’s trophy and cheque. No matter how many bottles and rain capes you ferry from the team car, breakaways you infiltrate or kilometres you spend sheltering your leader from the wind, your reward will often be nothing more than limping home with the gruppetto and being the last on the massage table at the hotel.

And while I, as a fan, acknowledge this devotion to the cause, I still can’t quite bring myself to ‘support’ a cycling team in the same way I would a football, cricket or rugby team.

Some may support a team because of its history. The roots of Movistar, for example, can be traced back to Reynolds and Banesto, the legendary teams of Pedro Delgado and Miguel Indurain, while Deceuninck-quickstep’s heritage goes back to Tom Boonen. Yet that doesn’t alter the fact that such supporters are fans of a global communications company and a manufacturer of PVC windows.

Meanwhile, supporters of Team Ineos Grenadiers need to ask themselves why they are waving the flag for a vehicle whose sole purpose seems to be to create congestion and pollution. It’s a peculiarly British trait.

In the traditional heartlands of bike racing, it’s more about the individual than the team. Cycling journalist Bertrand Boulenger says,

‘It’s rare to support a team in France or Belgium, even if the teams try to start this. It’s more common to support a rider. The craze around Remco Evenepoel here is pretty amazing.’

Apologies for using the F-word again but while your typical football team will have a physical, cultural and historic bond with a geographical area, cycling teams have a storage unit on an industrial estate in the middle of nowhere. A stadium provides the beating heart of a football club where fans can gather to celebrate or commiserate. I don’t recall thousands of Team Sky fans converging on a service course at the side of a Belgian ring road after their Tour de France victories.

The obvious exception is recently reformed Team Euskaltel-euskadi, who continue to fire the political, cultural and geographical passions of their Basque supporters. As a lover of that region of Spain myself I could quite happily don one of their orange jerseys and shout my allegiance at the top of the Puerto de Erlaitz.

But why would I want to wave a flag bearing the name of a global petrochemicals company? Or a coffee supplier? This year’s Tour was a vintage edition, but the names that made my heart race were Pogačar, Hirschi, Alaphilippe and Van Aert, not the names of a Middle Eastern state, Dutch holiday company, Belgian flooring manufacturer or Dutch supermarket.

Some may support a team because of its history. The roots of Movistar can be traced back to Reynolds and Banesto, the legendary teams of Delgado and Indurain