E Tu Sepp Kuss?

I found the recent Velonews attacks on the credibility of the Jumbo-Visma domination of this year’s Tour de France - “Wout van Aert’s Hat Trick Overshadowed by Doping Queries” - deeply unsettling, and what is certainly against my better judgment, am going to address them here.

An attack on Van Aert or Vingegaard is an attack on the entire team, so closely do they all train, race and live together at altitude camps and stage races, making me wonder how Sepp Kuss must have felt reading this in what is essentially his hometown paper. Welcome home Sepp! Or how that fiercely anti-doping advocate, Rally Cycling DS Jonas Carney, who formed Kuss before the Coloradoan went on to shine in the WorldTour, must be absorbing the news of his legacy rider being tarnished in this manner.

Let’s begin with the Yellow Jersey and the question of, “How did you transform from 22nd in the 2019 Danish National TT Championships to almost winning the final TT of this Tour?” Vingegaard, a shy, introverted young man, was on the small Danish Continental ColoQuick team, when, in 2018 Grischa Niermann of Jumbo-Visma called their director Karsten Kongen looking to sign rising star Julius Johansen, winner of the prestigious Olympia Tour that year. Instead, Kongen steered Niermann towards Vingegaard telling him that the young fishmonger’s numbers were through the roof.

His first pro season in 2019 started slowly, 123rd, 53rd, 43rd in the time trials he rode, the now infamous 22nd in the National Championships, but somehow missed was his fine 7th place in the end-of-August Tour of Denmark TT, only :07 behind triple U-23 World TT Champion Mikkel Bjerg and ahead of double Olympic Track Champion and three-time Danish National TT Champ Lasse Norman Hansen, two men who go fast. That performance represents a season of progression and a real marker for a future Grand Tour contender given that he was already breaking climbing records. Vingegaard won three pro races that inaugural season it should be noted.

Jumbo-Visma, like all the top teams, is obsessed with the time trial, that key to stage race victory. Each major TT is scouted in person three times by their top contenders, extremely detailed video complete with notes on each section is recorded and the 3D Veloviewer software is used for visualization. Racers pre-ride the TT’s making their own notes that are added into the mix. The technical team divides the TT’s into 5-to-7-kilometer sections with are rated, unusually not by wattage, but by the Borg Effort Scale which hospitals use to determine pain levels in a patient. Each section is accorded a 1-10 pain rating for the athletes to endure. Extensive wind tunnel testing is of course mandatory. Both Vingegaard and Van Aert have mannequins made to their exact measurements at the Eindhoven wind tunnel to allow for constant research. That is how one progresses in time trials.

The Jumbo-Visma team was reborn out of the wreckage of Rabbobank, “Which was destroyed by the decadence of doping in the same way the New Zealand All Blacks were reborn in 2007 after the decadence of alcohol brought them down. Like the All Blacks we want to ‘Leave the Jersey in a better place every season’”, according to Merijn Zeeman, the Jumbo-Visma manager. The reborn team began in 2014 as ‘Blanco’ – the clean blank slate- and had the smallest budget in the WorldTour, staying in the cheapest hotels, and collectively living a life of sacrifice. They developed a 10-rule philosophy that included open discussion, formation of ‘body and spirit’ and focus on ‘ownership’ of their behavior, on and off the bicycle. One could see this team cohesion throughout the Tour, even in the way the Van Aert backed off the final sprint on the Champs to ride across the final finish line with his team.

Cycling means something more to the Belgians that to anyone else. It is so deeply ingrained in their souls, in their history and national pride. You could see that with Yves Lampaert’s near-nervous breakdown when he realized that he was going to wear the Yellow Jersey in Copenhagen, and in Van Aert’s stream of tears after winning the final time trial, knowing that they’d brought home the Yellow. So, when that moment of great joy and deep sense of accomplishment was pierced by “How can we trust you?” you bet he got mad and disgusted. At the very least one must question their sense of moment and timing, perhaps it could have been asked earlier in the race. Look, you want to hound Astana after the revelations about Lopez? I’m right there with you. Had Vingegaard been associated with a Doctor Lamborghini, fair enough. But there’s nothing there that I know of anyway. Perhaps Velonews has secret information.

Regarding the performances of Wout van Aert, he is, without question one of the most beautiful, fluid, coordinated, confident athletes of any sport in the world. Baryshnikov on a bicycle. I learned how to really ride a bicycle after studying Aikido, being taught that power in throwing and hitting are limited by the perfection one’s technique. Van Aert, who pedals at 100-105 rpm even on the steepest mountain passes, is the most perfect racer I’ve ever seen, and that’s his superpower. And guess what? Big men climb: Gösta Pettersson, Eddy Merckx, Gianbattista Baronchelli, Miguel Indurain, Mikkel Bjerg, Brandon McNulty – they all go uphill.

The one-hour maximum cyclocross efforts that Van Aert has been making over the last decade have been another key to his superpowers, matching the effort required for a long time trial or a mountain pass. He’s the closest thing to what Eddy Merckx was like that any of us will ever see and is clearly accorded, by his peers, the title of “Best Racing Cyclist in the World.”

What burns me about all of this is how little respect or even interest is given by much of the media to how cycling has changed its culture. To how hard the young racers and their teams have toiled to change the perception of themselves and the sport only to be slammed back time and time again. From UCI President David Lappartient who opened his reign by talking about “motor doping” (great PR man) to the constant media refrain of “cycling’s dark past”, the kids just don’t get a break. Cycling should be proud of its leadership position in the world of professional sport. Of how they’ve shown that great performance can be accomplished without the often-severe health and psychological damage inflicted by drug use. You want to complain about Ketones? A diet supplement after the decades (in all sports mind you) of abusive amphetamine, cortisone, steroid and EPO use? It’s never going back to a banana in the back pocket and off you go. Today’s athletes are running, jumping, cycling science experiments. What we should be thankful for is that, in the same way that NFL players seem to be getting smaller, the long-term health of the athletes, mental and physical, is a focus of that science with cycling leading the way. I for one, would really like to see more articles about this progress; unfortunately, they just don’t make very good clickbait.