Attack on the Yellow Jersey
Three-time World Professional Road Champion Peter Sagan posted an impassioned defense of the Yellow Jersey Jonas Vingegaard after his crushing win of the Stage 16 time trial. The Dane has been under increasing media pressure over the validity of his win, questions of doping arising. Sagan, outraged by the accusations, went on to provide analysis of that performance.
He noted that Pogačar’s team only had one extra bicycle on their follow car roof as opposed to the full 10 of Jumbo-Visma (please see my Tuesday post regarding this aerodynamic advantage), that Vingegaard had clearly done better research on the racecourse as shown by the superb, F1 manner in which he flew through the turns (that should be clear to anyone who watched the race, he really defined ‘being on rails”. It was beautiful cycling) and that Jumbo-Visma “Has better equipment”. That Vingegaard was on his best day and Pogačar clearly not, something we’ve seen over the last three stages.
He also wrote, and this was news to me, that Vingegaard “has the second highest VO2MaX (97) ever registered and known/shared among all athletes across all sports and the highest among professional athletes. He’s a physical miracle.” (this from someone who was pretty freaky himself) “Think about this before you accuse someone of doping with literally zero evidence.”
Of course, the hits will keep on coming, they’re just too easy to make, and while I’m certainly not going to convince anyone in the suspicious camp with this piece, I can offer some perspective. When in Greece last month, I was lucky to meet an executive of The Royal Opera House, under whose purview falls The Royal Ballet. Turns out he’s a big cycling fan and we had a grand time talking about both cycling and ballet and finding the similarities between the two athletic art forms. As a note, the UK has a Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, other European countries have similar positions too since the pursuits are all deemed to be related. “Sport is Art.”
I recounted a story from my physical therapist of, thankfully, some years ago, a former dancer who had attended a ballet high school. She told me of how her Russian ballet mistress would put sharp spikes under her heels when up on Pointe, the threat of impalement keeping her literally on her toes. He laughed and said that brutal practices like those - at least under his watch - are disappearing and told me, which I found fascinating, that today, every balletic move, every plie, glisser and elancer, is scientifically analyzed for potential damaging effects. That they now carefully monitor practice sessions so that only so many moves of a certain type can be done, that great care is now put into the long-term health of their dancers with the goal of reducing the chronic injuries and pain that are so common. To drastically reduce the abuse of “Ballet Biscuits”, a term like the “Cowboy Candy” of rodeo riders, both names covering a variety of pain-killing sins.
There has been a similar change in cycling. The brutal practices of the past have been replaced by healthier ones. Changes such as the concussion protocols, and especially the advent of signing young riders to long-term contracts, a practice, it should be noted, first started by Cyrille Guimard with Greg LeMond back in 1980. His idea was to keep the young American jewel away from the ham hands of the National Team, to allow Greg to develop slowly and surely under his expert eye. The fact that Greg was able to avoid even a whiff of involvement in our 1984 blood doping scandal shows the wisdom of the move. You can see it in the way Egan Bernal is slowly being brought back to life, whereas a decade ago he would have simply been thrown on the junk pile or given a performance ultimatum which only the risk of drug use could have gotten him past. The three- and five-year contracts allow the teams to closely monitor their riders, to develop long-term records on the athlete’s physical state so that any anomalies are noticed and addressed. A positive test on a team can mean that 60 people lose their jobs and land in legal jeopardy so the risk of implementing a doping program today is enormous.
The athletes today, unlike those of the past who would do and take anything they were told, are generally of a much more informed and questioning nature. Carlo Rodríquez has studied engineering at university, Pello Bilbao has a degree from the University of the Basque Country. 2021 UCI World Road Women’s Champion Elisa Balsamo studies Classics at the University of Bologna, and so on. They are scarred by the accusations from the past - Vingegaard was three years old when Lance won his first Tour - and don’t seem anxious to repeat that ugly period.
Once the mind of an athlete is opened to the possibilities of greater performance, when they see a 1990’s climbing record, they figure out a way to get there. The beauty of human beings, our adaptability. Famously,crossing the finish line in 1954 after breaking the four-minute mile, Sir Roger Bannister uttered, “Après moi, le deluge”, because he knew that he’d not only broken a physical barrier, but more importantly, a mental one, and that a flood of challengers to his record would suddenly emerge. Which of course they did.
As I’ve stated many times, I’m very proud of today’s cycling, consider it a leader in the world of sport in what it is doing and has done to eliminate illegal drug use. I just wish we knew how to better get that message out there. The media certainly won’t do it for us.