The Tour of Oman has concluded with Adam Yates winning thanks to his stage win on the Jebel Al Akhdar. He and Jan Hirt surged clear on the climb. Yates looked like a coiled spring in the final kilometre just waiting to make his move and then jumped in the final 200m to take the stage and GC.

Oman has seen astonishing rain in recent days. Muscat has an average annual rainfall of 100mm, it had 140mm on Monday and this sadly caused widespread disruption and even some deaths. A public holiday was decreed so that people could stay at home while the authorities could tend to the flooding. A knock-on effect of this was the Tour of Oman saw several stages abbreviated. It’s unlikely the sporting outcome changed though, but a few hours less racing all week.

Sol but no Ruta
Racing in Europe isn’t guaranteed either. Farmer protests in Spain have just caused the Ruta del Sol’s opening stage today to be cancelled. Similar to the Etoile de Bessèges earlier this month, the farmers haven’t sought to stop the race but the protests have seen guardia civil police resources called upon which were normally going to be deployed for the racing.

Cofidis competition
A stage winner in Oman last year thanks to Jesus Herrada (pictured), Cofidis are now the only WorldTeam without a win so far this season. It’s a ball and chain to wear but the surprise is just how quickly all the other teams have scored already. In times past it could take until April or even May to get a win and by then it’s a problem. For anyone keeping count, arguably the bigger race is for UCI points and Cofidis are doing alright, 13th on this year’s tables.

Prudhomme interview
Christian Prudhomme sat down for a good half hour interview with French website cyclismact.net. A lot of the English language reporting has focussed on him saying the thing we knew already: ASO isn’t part of the One Cycling Project any more. But he discussed beaucoup more across a range of topics, from how long he’ll keep doing the job to dealing with hotter summers to rider safety, including reprising an idea first suggested by ex-pro Philippe Gilbert who sits on the UCI’s Athlete Commission that gears could be restricted. The thinking is that if accidents and their propensity for injury are function of speed then capping the maximum gear ratio could slow things down but of course it’s an indirect method. Other things were mentioned including the growth in the roadside audience – one in four spectators last year was a newcomer, many women are coming to the Tour – and TV audience with, among French viewers, the largest segment of audience is now 16-24 years old. The Netflix effect.

Out of sight
Another thing Prudhomme mentioned was the exponential growth in road furniture in France. It’s mirrored all over Europe and beyond too. One upshot of this is that pro races are increasingly unable to ride into towns and cities. The recent Dauphiné route was notable for some of the very small host towns but look at Milan-Sanremo, now Pavia-Sanremo. Pavia’s a charming place and the revised route won’t change the day’s sport…and it’s yet another race now happening outside of a big city and away from important audiences. It’s rare to find a race these days that visits a capital city or other major conurbations, just when the sport could do with visiting the places where people live and work, where younger audiences are found and where business and politics are done. It’s right to ask if the sport can go to the US, Japan while also wondering about its presence in Milan, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam and London.

Sustitución
Talking of rider safety, Eusebio Unzue’s call for rider substitutions in grand tours got short shrift from Prudhomme too, as it has from plenty of others. I can see his thinking but it’s the logic of a team manager who doesn’t want to be a rider down in a major event and holding this interest higher than than other aspects. At the margin it could even make racing more dangerous because teams know in the first week that if they take risks with fighting for position and lose a rider to a resulting crash than they can always bring in a fresh rider: it reduces the costs of reckless riding. Anyway Unzue was floating some ideas during a chat with the media on the margins of the Tour of Colombia, and like Prudhomme above, he wasn’t carving this onto a stone tablet as a take-it-or-else proposition.

Embed from Getty Images

Trenchant triathlete
A mention of Bastien Tronchon, the Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale was second in the Jaen Classic this week and keeping company with some big names. You might remember him from his win a stagiaire in the Vuelta a Burgos, surviving from the breakaway to latch onto Pavel Sivakov and then take the 2-up sprint. A big future on the bike? Who knows but he’s a character, his social media’s refreshingly unfiltered. He lost a bet with a friend and so had to swim across the Lac du Bourget, France’s largest lake, last summer although he wisely swam across rather than the length, still it was 3.1km. A keen XC-skier, he’s been regional athletics champion too.

Kurzarbeit
Climb out of the Lac du Bourget, dry off and you can ride enjoy a pleasant day’s ride along the Jura mountains to Grenchen, home of BMC, the luxury Swiss bike company. It’s having a tough time with its local newspaper Grenchener Tagblatt reporting that factory workers on are Kurzarbeit, literally “short work” and where – I don’t know the Swiss or cantonal laws – staff, instead of being made redundant, work significantly fewer hours and have part of their income paid by welfare plans. It’s another sign of the bike industry’s struggles with oversupply, particularly at the top end.

Red Bull marketing challenge
Lastly while we’re all anticipating Red Bull’s arrival in pro cycling because of the increased marketing coverage this will bring… it’s a strange sponsorship. While you can conceivably fit Bora and Hansgrohe in your kitchen, use Soudal glue to lay Quickstep flooring, or even go buy an Ineos Grenadier, or simply promote Bahrain and Israel, how will pro cyclists consume Red Bull’s energy drink? Put another way are they going to sponsor people who work hard to avoid such sugary products? Yes they make “Zero” but riders will surely use alternative energy drinks in competition and training. For all the wow factor hoped for there’s also an authenticity challenge too.

The post Wednesday Shorts first appeared on The Inner Ring.

When the wildcard invitations for the Tour de France were announced the only surprise was the timing, who predicted 11.04am on 18 January? We knew already Lotto-Dstny and Israel-Premiertech qualified automatically. The elective picks went to Uno-X and TotalEnergies, same as last year. No surprise but for these two teams, especially the latter, invitations could be hard to come by next time.

Total Energies goes back to 2000 when Jean-René Bernaudeau took his successful U-23 team and built a pro team. They’ve ridden the Tour de France every year. It started as Bonjour, backed by a classifieds newspaper about to get eaten by the internet. It went to Brioches Boulangères, Bouygues Telecom, Europcar (pictured) and Direct Energie. Total Energies was accidental because Direct Energie was an electricity supplier that got bought by French oil major Total: it bought the company and found it had a cycling team. This partly explains why the cycling team today might be sponsored by one of the biggest companies in the world – among quoted companies it is the 85th biggest by market value at the time of typing – yet it has a second division team.

So far, so good. A team that’s been on the road for a quarter of a century, backed by a stable company but this is where the troubles come because the past doesn’t guarantee the future. This year it scraped into the Tour de France with one of the last two places.

For 2024 Total Energies merited an invitation. They had two second places during the Tour’s stages last year and even if they’ve lost their star Peter Sagan, he wasn’t delivering any results. We can also look at the other teams in the second tier and none of them scream “pick me” or “essential”. But this is where the problems come because the likes of Tudor and Q36.5 are on the up. Tudor’s got itself a wildcard for the Giro d’Italia and yes the brand has started sponsoring the race but it has a credible team for a grand tour with the likes of Matteo Trentin, Michael Storer, Alberto Dainese and more. One or two more signings and they’ll have an ironclad case for a Tour invite.

Also there’s a rule coming where in 2025 invites can only go to those ranked among the top-40 teams on the UCI World ranking, and by 2026 this shrinks to the top-30. Total ought to be OK but right now they’re ranked 80th and have just 11 points but of course it is only February and given their riders and race programme they’ll climb up the rankings but still… eleven points combined. So there’s already some jeopardy this season and even more so the next.

If all this is based on moving parts with the likes of Tudor on the rise, we must think several moves ahead as there could be fallers. We’re in the second year of the three year World Tour promotion/relegation cycle where two of the current top-18 teams could drop out, right now this could be Arkéa and Astana but we’re 35% of the way there. A relegated team might find the second tier more accommodating but equally the sponsors could walk. It’s not something the team and its backers should rely on.

Embed from Getty Images

The solution for Total Energies is to beef up their recruitment, to make them a must-have team for July. Which is where Julian Alaphilippe comes in. The team was already looking closely at signing him in the wake of the failed Jumbo-Soudal team merger where the Frenchman could have been left out and free to sign elsewhere. Interestingly the talk about signing Alaphilippe wasn’t unsourced gossip but came from none other than Patrick Pouyanné (pictured), the chairman and CEO of Total Energies speaking about his sponsorship of sport to L’Equipe (my translation):

I needed sports that are close to people. I was told about the Tour de France. Then we bought Direct Energie and so picked up a team. During a stage in the Pyrenees I met Jean-René Bernaudeau. I only asked one thing: “no scandal. Otherwise the next day you’ll lose your sponsor”. I was also really impressed, following the strategy, by the amount of people with our jerseys*. After all, a company that leads in France, and one of the biggest in the world as well, can it allow itself not to win while it’s winning in business? I said one day to Jean-René “if you could get Alaphilippe, a French guy, nice guy, who is well-known and has positive images? I’d be prepared to raid the piggy bank”.

* the team hands out imitation jerseys from the publicity caravan to spectators ahead of the race

Alaphilippe isn’t a done deal. The team probably looked about buying him out of his current Soudal contract but they’d have to match his lucrative contract otherwise why would he move? Only Alaphilippe these days isn’t as valuable a prospect, he might still be a talent. Still he could sign on the right terms and this might swing things for them in terms of an invitation but they might need another signing, or at least to see their Mathieu Burgaudeau land a big result and hope Pierre Latour can get over his descending phobia. Alaphilippe though is far from certain to sign, other teams will be interested. Indeed it might not be a match… but if Tudor wanted to ride the Tour then Alaphilippe could be of interest too.

Conclusion
Total Energies make for a curious team, one of the biggest corporate sponsors going with a vast global marketing budget that could fund a top-tier cycling team out of loose change, yet it’s content with a small but friendly team that just qualifies for the Tour de France. They’re still an obvious pick for one of the two wildcards for this year’s Tour de France. But this isn’t guaranteed, regulatory change with the obligation to pick among the top-30 teams soon makes things harder and rival teams positioning to make themselves the obvious choice for an invite make things harder. Alaphilippe’s imminent availability is of interest but they’ll have to raid the piggybank soon or risk the 25 year story stopping.

There’s a similar story with Uno-X but they’re a step ahead. They’ve signed with Magnus Cort, Andreas Leknessund, Alexander Kristoff but now have to convert this into results in case as rival teams have ambitions to overtake them.

The post More Energies first appeared on The Inner Ring.

Nairo Quintana’s doctor is to face trial this September following police raids at the 2020 Tour de France.

You might have seen the headlines but Breton newspaper Le Télégramme broke the story and has a lot of detail that is not elsewhere thanks to an article by their journalist Jean Saint-Marc. It’s behind a paywall and a lot of the coverage in English and more on the story has come from the free but brief AFP newswire story that confirms the trial date, outlets have padded their pieces out with summaries of Quintana’s tramadol case rather than the detail covered by Le Télégramme. But it’s worth subscribing to the paper and exploring the Télégramme article as it has a lot more detail…

Background
Remember the 2020 Tour de France and the OCLAESP police raids in the third week that saw Nairo Quintana and his entourage searched, and even a few days’ detention for his personal doctor Fredy Gonzalez? It was a long time ago and the trail seemed to have gone cold, the case closed. But Le Télégramme broke the story yesterday, since confirmed by newswire service AFP, that Dr Gonzalez will stand trial in September on charges of [my translation]:

• “possession of a banned substance or method for use by an athlete without medical grounds”
• “administering or applying to an athlete, in this case Nairo and Dayer Quintana, without medical grounds, a banned substance or method during the course of a sports event”

Among the items found were pouches of saline solution and a tourniquet, on which Le Télégramme says there is DNA from both Dr Gonzalez and the Quintana brothers, presumably they were swabbed for DNA when questioned by police at the end of the 2020 Tour de France.

“We’re not talking about a first aid kit” someone close to the case told Le Télégramme. But the issue for the pending trial is what is illegal. Possessing pouches, or even barrels, of saline solution is not a crime. But it can be in breach of the rules if they are administered intravenously to riders during the course of an event. For starters for rehydration it could be a breach of the UCI’s “No Needles” policy which does allow for infusions but only when there is no alternative and only if the UCI is informed within 24 hours, so if Dr Gonzalez didn’t tell the UCI at the time there’s a small sanction but we’re talking days rather than career-ending.

However saline solution can also be used in the context of blood doping, to manipulate blood values, it can be used to mask urine test results or “flush out” prohibited substances from the body quicker. For these reasons its use – not possession – is on the Prohibited List, as in a banned method. Here’s a screengrab from the WADA Prohibited List (my highlighting):

Note what’s crucial here is the quantity. A small infusion of saline could trip the UCI No Needle policy. But over 100ml in 12 hours and it’s a potential anti-doping case. Here Le Télégramme reports [translated] “On this last point [the quantity] there’s no doubt, according to our sources, given the size of the pouches found” but reports at the time said 100ml was seized, only more than this would be incriminating under the WADA rules.

Still finding a jumbo saline pack does not equate to breaking the rules, the prosecutor in the trial will have to try and prove the link this September. Even an empty pouch doesn’t mean it was all infused. We’ll have to wait for the trial and viewed right now it’s not obvious that Dr Gonzalez would even want to fly to France to face trial.

Nairo and Dayer Quintana are not on trial because doping itself is not criminalised in France, instead possession and administration are. However Le Télégramme also reports the details have been passed to “the sporting authorities” (presumably France’s anti-doping agency the AFLD and cycling’s governing body the UCI) so that they can pursue the case.

The Arkéa team said Quintana’s entourage acted “in isolation” and team manager Emmanuel Hubert told the paper “one person alone will be judged. The team isn’t incriminated”. Legally-speaking that’s right but it evokes questions of management and oversight all the same.

Conclusion
First a “chapeau” to Jean Saint-Marc at Le Télégramme for breaking the story. His newspaper is often an excellent source of cycling news, after all it is in Brittany, arguably the cycling hotbed in France. Anyway there’s more detail in there that is worth reading… and sharing and I wanted to accompany this with snippets of the rules in place too.

The trial is slated for September. It’s taken so long that it won’t be a surprise if it is delayed or adjourned further and you wonder if Dr Gonzalez will want to take part given he risks jail, although there is an extradition treaty between France and Colombia. The law is interesting though as it can compel witnesses, including the Quintana brothers.

Also the court case is one thing, but the details have been passed to the sports authorities who can investigate whether there have been breaches of the anti-doping rules. Here Quintana risks big because the tariff goes up to a four year ban and he’d be at risk of forfeiting all this results since September 2020 which in turn contributed to Arkéa-Samsic’s promotion to the World Tour although just as the UCI might may wish to ask more questions it could equally review the evidence and conclude there’s no case to investigate, there might even be a note from Dr Gonzalez to clear the “No Needle” policy. But we don’t know which way this will go yet and if Quintana started this year back in the peloton hoping to put the Tramadol case behind him now there’s something bigger on the horizon.

The post Gonzalez Goes To Trial, Questions For Quintana first appeared on The Inner Ring.

Frank Bonnamour has been provisionally suspended by cycling’s governing body the UCI due to “unexplained abnormalities in his Biological Passport”. Here’s a guide of what this means.

Loyal readers might already know but some of the procedure and management has changed since we last explored this issue and there have been a slew of published decisions too.

Bonnamour riders for Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale but as the team is keen to point out the suspension is based on “tests carried out before he joined the team”. The son of ex-pro Yves Bonnamour, his mother rode the Tour de France Féminin in the 1980s. He was on many people’s radar in the 2021 Tour de France where he was often up the road and eventually got the “combativity prize” for his efforts, a reward much needed by the B&B Hotels team.

Passport history
The passport was launched in 2008. It’s funded by the teams, the UCI, race organisers and indirectly by riders who see a levy on all prize money contribute to the costs.

Today the passport is run by the International Testing Agency (ITA) a third party anti-doping agency that works for cycling’s UCI, as well as other sports. The passport is also handled by the Athlete Passport Management Unit (APMU), is a WADA-funded scheme and both are based in Lausanne, Switzerland.

What is the passport?
It’s an electronic record of past anti-doping tests from urine and blood tests. Crucially it also tracks blood values over time (and also steroid levels via urine tests too). Haematological values can be take from in-competition tests but also out-of-competition.

Haematological values are taken when an athlete is blood tested and these are all logged into a database and over time a “longitudinal profile” is established. Software uses logic and probability algorithms to spot anomalies.

Above you can see a screenshot of the passport software – from a laboratory presentation that’s no longer online – showing haemoglobin (HGB) levels, the off-score (OFFS), the Abnormal Blood Profile Score (ABPS) and the reticulocyte ratio (RET%). 20 years ago cycling fans started to learn these terms after they’d mastered the likes of peloton and grupetto.

The software alerts if an athlete’s numbers deviate from an established pattern, usually if it’s outside the 0.5-99.5% range of expected values. This can signal telltale patterns of blood doping like taking EPO or infusing stored blood where the body reacts in certain ways to this but there can be innocent reasons too. When alerted an expert reviews the data and has four options:

• do nothing because the data look normal to the human eye/brain
• recommend the athlete is placed on a list for target testing
• alert the athlete that they could be suffering from a serious illness
• state improbable natural causes, a likely doping case

In the event of the fourth option, the procedures continue for the APMU. Now three independent experts are picked and they get the data and they too pick among the four choices. All three must review the same data and only if all three conclude that, in the words of WADA’s procedural manuals, “it is highly likely that a prohibited substance or prohibited method had been used and unlikely that it is the result of any other cause” will the case proceed. If this is the case then the APMU creates a dossier with the athlete’s age, gender, sport and a range of other information such as the chain of custody for the samples taken, whether the athlete was at altitude and so on. This file is reviewed and the three experts must concur for an “adverse passport finding” and then an anti-doping organization is notified, in cycling it’s the ITA.

The ITA contacts the rider to advise them that it is mulling an anti-doping case and gives them the APMU dossier with the data, sample custody and more along with the request for the athlete to explain the data in the dossier and their response, or not, is noted.

• The short version is that there has to be unanimous agreement between experts at the ITA/AMPU that this is highly likely a scenario of doping for the case to proceed, any doubt and it won’t.

So far all this happens behind closed doors. Here the ITA will decide whether to proceed or not. It’s worth noting we only get to hear of the cases that have got this far, we don’t know what percentage of samples trigger a three expert review or how many riders have been invited to explain themselves only for the case to be closed.

As of today
Three experts in agreement and no satisfying explanation from the athlete in question? It’s now that things go public and having been informed by the ITA, the UCI announces a rider has been provisionally suspended. This is where we are with Frank Bonnamour’s case today.

Next up will come hearings where he will get to put his side of things, blood values can move in suspicious ways but an athlete might have records of illness or other issues, our presumption now is one of innocence although the cyclist is suspended. This can take time. The burden of proof for the UCI is “comfortable satisfaction, bearing in mind the seriousness of the allegation which is made” as in greater than a mere balance of probability but less than proof beyond reasonable doubt.

If there’s a verdict the ban is typically four years with a fine possible as a percentage of the salary. Past results can be stripped depending on when the data in question was flagged.

Recent precedents

Biopassport cases are rare and they can be very slow. Last August Alpecin-Deceuninck rider Robert Stannard was provisionally suspended with him saying it related to something from 2018 so when he was with Mitchelton-Scott, there’s no verdict yet and Stannard is out of contract. Similarly Movistar saw “their” rider Jaime Roson suspended but this from blood values logged from his time before at Caja Rural, pictured when he was outclimbing Vincenzo Nibali. It can be over time that and the Bayesian process that normal values logged over and over might betray something worth investigating from the past and in turn require more testing. The UCI has lost one case, that against Roman Kreuziger in 2015 when it and WADA tried to appeal the Czech verdict that cleared him but they then pulled this after “newly obtained information”.

Conclusion
The athlete passport is a tool to track blood values which might signal types of blood doping but it doesn’t deliver the easy positive or negative results. It can help spot patterns and with this can come more targetted testing of some athletes and then an independent panel of three experts. It’s useful but no panacea. But as said here before, if you think it’s not beatable what you should really be calling for is more passport: more testing, more logged values and so a better chance of flagging something.

Frank Bonnamour is innocent for now, although provisionally suspended by the UCI. He’ll have a chance to put his side of events in an anti-doping hearing but this could take a long time, other cases have been open for months and even years before reaching a verdict.

The post Frank Bonnamour Provisionally Suspended first appeared on The Inner Ring.

The route of the 2024 Critérium du Dauphiné route has been unveiled and here is a closer look at the course including a tough “new” climb. The race will take place from Sunday 2 June to Sunday 8 June.

Stage 1

100% Saint-Pourçain as the stage starts and finish in the town of Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule and has a finishing loop. A flurry of early climbs means some will target the breakaway hoping to take the mountains jersey and if only for day it’s a prize and a photo opportunity. A likely sprint finish although note there’s 2,000m of vertical gain and how many sprinters will start given the stages to come?

Stage 2

A dash around Romain Bardet’s training roads. The Col de Saint-Thomas midway is harder than the stats suggest with a final kilometre at 12% but it’s hardly going to turn the race upside down. A summit finish? The Col de la Loge ticks lots of boxes as it’s at a mountain pass, it’s over 1,000m high, the upper part is flanked by pine trees, there’s a ski station at the top and yet the missing ingredient is a tough gradient. It’s a scenic road all the way up from the Loire valley floor but never that steep and while the profile doesn’t show it there are some flat sections after the Croix de Ladret and it flattens out again right at the finish. It makes for a hard final 30km that no heavyset sprinter can cope with but it’s for strong riders who can surf slipstreams and bully the big ring.

Stage 3

Another stage, another day with plenty of vertical gain, another tricky climb mid-stage before a big ring drag to the line in the shadow of Mont d’Alambre, an extinct volcano cone. It’s a breakaway day given the uphill start and the following day’s time trial means the GC contenders will try to ride in economy mode.

Stage 4

A bit of déjà-vu as this 34km stage borrows roads from last year’s Dauphiné. Talking of 2023, that year’s edition had a hard time trial stage, this one here is on more gentle rolling roads as it crosses the Loire – France’s longest river – before a drag up to the finish.

Stage 5

200km and maybe a sprint stage but there’s 2,800m of vertical gain and even in the Vuelta that’d be a lot for the sprinters and the lumpy terrain could offer attackers a chance.

Stage 6

The first Alpine stage and in the backyard of the Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale team’s HQ. There’s a dash across to the Col du Granier, climbed “sideways” as in west to east rather than the usual approach in the north-south axis of the Chartreuse trilogy. Then comes the Collet d’Allevard, a ski station summit finish meaning a regular, engineered road but it’s steeper than usual for the French Alps and selective. It was last used in 2011 when Joaquim “Purito” Rodriguez won.

Stage 7

The scenic Col des Saisies out of Albertville means big climbing from the start and the first half of the stage hardly offers any rest with the Aravis and Colombière climbs. After the high speed descent to Cluses comes the “Côte d’Arâches” which, pending the map publication, looks like tahe scenic cliff climbing road on the way to the Flaine ski resort before taking a balcony road across. The finish is a “new” climb, the town of Samoëns is better know as the start of the dreaded Joux-Plane but instead of going north, here it’s south and up a tough road to a ski station; this climb is often known as the Plateau des Saix and it’s a tough climb, forums abound with adjectives like “terrible”, “wild”, “infernal” and some locals say it’s harder than the Joux-Plane.

Stage 8

A stage that starts with a loop via steep Forclaz de Montmin before a more gentle middle section that could have had some more small climbs to make lifer harder for a chasing peloton before the Salève climb that is more irregular and selective than it looks. Then it’s across to the final climb up to the Plateau de Glières. The plateau has featured in recent Tours de France as a gravel road and climbed from another direction, this is the Col du Collet tackled from the south-west – the same as 2013 when Julian Alaphilippe won the final stage of the Tour de l’Avenir – and it’s steep with plenty of 10-12% slopes before a descent which flattens the official gradient number and then a sharp rise to the finish on gravel, tailor-made for Primož Roglič.

The Verdict
It’s again very much a tour of the Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes region rather than the Dauphiné but we’re used to that now. After the obligatory Auvergne stages, the 34km time trial is interesting given Remco Evenepoel is riding, this is the stage for him and if he does win, sets up a test for his Soudal-Quicksteppers in the mountains as rivals like Jonas Vingegaard and Primož Roglič will be only to happy to see their teams dismantle the Belgian squad as they aim for victory.

There’s a “new” climb in the Plateau des Saix and it’s reputed to be very tough, it could be decisive and it’s interesting for the novelty but also to see if it features in the Tour de France in the coming years. Often where the Dauphiné goes the Tour follows but what’s striking is how the race visits some very small places, not just along the way but as the start and finish towns like Celles-sur-Durolle, population 1,647 or Neulise population 1,324 and that’s just two examples. It does have a start in Alberville and passes through Vienne but this is quite a discreet race, it’d be a pity if the towns within this region aren’t jostling to host the race.

There won’t be any doubt about the winner given the course, a long TT (for this era) and three tough summit finishes and it should set things up nicely for the Tour weeks later.

The post Critérium du Dauphiné Route first appeared on The Inner Ring.

The Etoile de Bessèges opening stage is cancelled because of protests by farmers. As it happens the race and the farmers’ union were in contact to make sure the the race would be ok. Alas the stage is off because of the knock-on effects of protests elsewhere.

Farmer protests began south-western France in a gentle way with town signs turned upside down, something Toms Skuijnš and Mads Pedersen spotted late last year. This has spread nationally and in recent days turned into bigger things like road blockades. French farmers protesting might not be news but these are bigger than usual with fishing involved too; and other European countries have seen protests too. We might see more disruption this season.

Getting back to cycling and the farmers were even ready to take part in the race, lining the route with tractors so that more people could see their protest thanks to TV according to local newspaper Le Midi Libre. But blockades on the nearby A9 autoroute mean other roads are saturated with extra traffic which in turn makes closing the race route harder and also complicates things for emergency services. Among all the rules and regulations for holding a bike race in France – and there are beaucoup – are often plans to ensure emergency vehicles aren’t blocked; typically don’t route a stage close to a hospital in case an ambulance needs to reach the hospital when the peloton is passing. Similarly venturing near a major highway brings added complications in case this is artery because of an accident or roadworks and the race route ends up being needed to absorb the detoured vehicles, often a tricky issue. This is just what has happened today. Plus the gendarmes needed to accompany the race and help with security are busy elsewhere, a big factor as well.

The decision to cancel the race was made by the local préfet, an appointed representative of central government, who asked the race to stop. So they had no choice but plan to resume tomorrow as the remaining four stages are further away from the protest zones.

Farmers and cycling normally have a tradition of working together, you will remember the field art from the Tour de France, this is a coordinated advertising campaign by the FNSEA farmer’s union who pick a theme for each year and even send the GPS coordinates to France Télévisions so that the producers can direct helicopters to film them. Later in the year Christian Prudhomme often gives out a prize for the best art. So normally these are two rural activities that coexist rather than clash.

Embed from Getty Images

Protests and cycling go together too in France and beyond. The sport takes place outdoors and if every road junction can be staffed by police, all the bits in between cannot be policed and so it’s easy for a few people to stop the race and get on TV. Typically this has been managed. Take the Tour de France and the CGT trade union, often one of the most militant and behind worker protests, has a presence in the publicity caravan: it works with the race. There’s been an implicit convention that protesters can threaten the race but not actually block it and in return the TV cameras will film banners and so on. We’ve seen this in Belgium too, nobody wants to stop a bike race but they will use it because it gets a good audience. That’s been a tradition but protests have stopped other races – think the Worlds last August – although only for minutes rather than cancellation for the day.

That’s also the Tour de France and maybe the Flemish classics as exceptions, attracting more protests because of a bigger audience but also with more police and political support to ensure the race goes on. In recent years we’ve seen préfets as literal spoilsports, with several orders to halt bike races. It was too hot in 2022 for the Route d’Occitanie so the official said non to a stage of the bike race, although the actual race could have gone ahead but the emergency services were too busy helping the frail struggling with the conditions, fair enough but if the Tour was in town it probably would have happened. Even Paris-Roubaix has been moved to October because a préfet ordered it. But the Tour de France probably benefits from such political capital that it’s near-unstoppable, the last time was 1982 when metal workers in Denain halted Stage 5, a time trial. Smaller races don’t have the same clout. Loyal readers will remember the story of when strikers tried to halt Paris-Nice and the story of that photo above, you can read the full thing here but the racing happened.

Conclusion
One of the charms of road racing is how races cross landscapes and visit new places. It’s a means to explore local culture and more, although this usually means scenery and cuisine more than protests that have knock-on effects on road traffic and the supply of moto gendarmes.

Hopefully all that’s missed is a day’s racing, riders can still get a ride done but the organisers hardly get a day off as they’ve got services to deliver and bills to pay, yet their “product” has been shrunk by 20%. According to L’Equipe today the race has a budget of about a million Euros but nobody gets rich off it, it’s a question of whether the race can survive shocks like this. Meanwhile there’s still bike racing to watch on a Wednesday, the Volta Valenciana starts today and Al Ula Tour goes on uninterrupted. Because if anyone dared to protest there…

The post Etoile de Blockages first appeared on The Inner Ring.

Two labels to describe bike races: top-down and bottom-up. Here it’s not a description of the course profile, instead this is about the organisation and culture.

Simplisitc? Sure, I’ll explain more below but the point is to explore two reasons for having a bike race in caricature and having these labels to hand means they can be referred to in future pieces.

Top-down races
These are the events that have been created at the stroke of pen, a click of a mouse or in a committee meeting. Important people have met and decided they want a bike race to happen somewhere. Their wish is their command and so the race duly happens. Typically this requires bringing in outsiders as organisers. Often the pro race in question can be one of the few big bike races going in the area, the sporting calendar is thin on other bike races. Think of the UAE Tour or the Tour of Oman.

Bottom-up races
Think of a local event that has started out small and grown, usually underpinned by local support whether funding or volunteer work and if there’s government involvement, it’s more likely to be local and regional rather than national. A newly-ordained pro race could still be included here if it’s an event that sits on top of a pyramid of other pro races, elite events and right down to kids races. A further aspect here is the authenticity, an event that takes some of the local characteristics and charms, it borrows from the landscape. Examples could include the Strade Bianche which grew out of the Eroica event and has become an event beloved by locals and non-locals alike.

Either or?
Obviously there’s a substantial grey zone. Go through the calendar race by race and we’d struggle to brand each event as top down or bottom up with a snap judgement in three seconds. It might take more deliberation or even hesitation, and that’s no bad thing. Inevitably given these two labels are caricatures but in evoking them means this topic can be raised in the future and linked to, I can mention a “top down race” in passing, perhaps with a hyperlink, and you’ll know the meaning already or can find it out with the link.

The Tour de France is clearly a massive event but it benefits from a huge societal support in France. It’s grown into an institution that’s part of France’s cultural heritage, ditto the Giro and Vuelta. The Tour Colombia 2.1 stage race is back for 2024, clearly a race with massive popular support in Colombia but the revival this year has required political sign-off at a high level, locals alone aren’t sufficient.

Authenticity was suggested above and a top down race can have it if the new race is cherished by locals, takes on local characteristics and so on. The Tour de Yorkshire felt very real, but it was dependent on local funding and once the mood changed it was gone.

Labels and attitudes can shift too. A race that is imposed from the top down can take roots and become locally supported, perhaps outlasting the initial political or financial support. The season-ending Japan Cup race started out as a top-down race in the wake of the 1990 World Championships but has since been nurtured by host city Utsunomiya as a valuable addition to the city’s calendar. The Tour Down Under was created by politicians but has been adopted by locals as their festival of cycling and this in turn reinforces political support.

All this is particular to cycling. Viewed from the outside from a cycling blog it looks like you can rustle up a a golf or tennis tournament, or a Formula 1 GP and they can become instantly important. A bike race can happen, it can be awarded a high UCI status, it might have fine racing but this doesn’t bring prestige nor bless it with authenticity that makes it a hit.

Summary
Two labels that might come in handy later to describe races. Not every race can can fit one of these two labels but having them is going to help in the future when we look at calendar reform and the commercial imperative to create new races. If it helps, think of top down races as those where people said “we should hold a bike race there” and bottom-up races are where people said “we should hold a bike race here”.

The post Two Types of Bicycle Races first appeared on The Inner Ring.

La Française des Jeux, the French lottery and gambling company, has launched a takeover of Kindred, a Swedish gambling company. No, you haven’t opened the Financial Times or Bloomberg, there’s a cycling story here. La Française des Jeux is FDJ, co-owner of the Groupama-FDJ team while Kindred is better known to many as the bookmaker Unibet, title sponsor of TDT-Unibet, the Dutch team. Only cycling’s rules don’t allow one company to own two teams so this spells trouble for one of them.

As we’ll see there can be ways around it but while their sponsors try to merge, it’s down to both team managers to resolve, separately of course.

The rules bit
Pro cycling doesn’t allow one company owning or sponsoring two teams, the idea being that if two squads were under the same roof or funded from the same pot then they’d be de facto team mates. Here’s the rule:

2.15.052 The members of a UCI WorldTeam may have no link with the members of another UCI WorldTeam, with a UCI ProTeam or with an organiser of a UCI WorldTour event likely to influence the sporting course of events or to be perceived as so doing. In exceptional cases, which do not challenge the integrity of the competition or the sporting fairness, the UCI Management Committee may grant an exception.

As you can see it applies to WorldTeams and ProTeams alike, the labels for the top two tiers in the sport. Why this rule? The risk is the owner might get the teams to collude, it could be in a race or in the transfer market. If none of this happens then as the rule says even the perception of this can be sufficient to stop one person or company having two teams.

Teams share bike sponsors like Specialized and Wilier or Shimano and so on. But these companies do not own or control the teams. Under the UCI rules the jargon used is “paying agent” as in the person or legal entity behind the team and this can’t be the same for two teams. Similarly the rules refer to the “principal partners”, think title sponsors, the kind of backers that keep the team on the road.

Long way to go
There’s another rule (2.15.063) that both sides have to notify the UCI within ten days of a change but we’re not there yet, so far FDJ has said it wants to buy Kindred and launched a takeover offer. If it goes ahead it’ll take months before FDJ legally takes ownership; in the mean time Kindred shareholders might reject the offer or another company will make a higher offer with the side effect of making this blog post redundant. Still the central scenario for pro cycling is a merger between sponsors so we’ll explore this a bit more.

The alternative case study
Two teams with the same owner? Having just said it’s not allowed. Loyal readers may remember reading that Cofidis and Arkéa are both part of Crédit Mutuel, a French banking group. But this is probably the exception that proves the rule because Crédit Mutuel is a complicated organisation, trying to draw the corporate organigram would be a headache and as Wikipeida puts it “Crédit Mutuel group has a decentralized structure, despite being designated as a single significant institution under European Banking Supervision”. It’s more like several different banks Arkéa being a brand of one of these and Cofidis belonging to another.

Embed from Getty Images

Unibet and FDJ could find a way to be independent of each other but it’s not easy. FDJ’s Présidente directrice générale is Stéphane Pallez and she regularly appears with the Groupama-FDJ team (and the FDJ-Suez women’s team too) and she could soon be the boss of Unibet too. It would have to be demonstrated that Unibet was independent of FDJ to satisfy the UCI, in simple terms that Pallez wasn’t in charge or had sway over the newly-acquired Swedish asset. This sounds unlikely, why set up a convoluted corporate structure just to ensure their cycling teams are separate?

Business decision
Which brings the bigger risk, one outside of the UCI rulebook. The enlarged company will look at its marketing budget and think “we’re sponsoring one cycling team, that’s plenty”.

Conclusion
None of this is written in an alarmist tone but the merger of two companies each sponsoring a cycling team goes from a “what if” theory to a practical example now. One company can’t be the title sponsor for two teams so a likely outcome is only one team will be left, it depends on the corporate deal and the UCI review later this year, little will change this season. But as we know you can’t really merge two cycling teams. There might be a way for both teams each to exist alongside each other but if the deal goes through you’d imagine the established, directly-owned Groupama-FDJ franchise stays and TDT-Unibet is left looking for another sponsor at the end of the year. We’ll see what the outcome is but that’s probably the one to bet on, or at least insure against.

The post FDJ-Unibet Sponsor Merger first appeared on The Inner Ring.

The Tour Down Under was enjoyable but it was over in a flash. I enjoy it, it’s literally the only race I’ll get out of bed to watch. But it’s also the same race where I know I can be back in bed in 15 minutes, post-race interviews and on-screen top-10 results included. This year was no exception. Can we have some more please?

You can’t pick the winner confidently but you can write the day’s script. A move goes clear, a rider from the Australian team will try to take the mountains points before it’s back together, the stage ends in a sprint, be it a bunch sprint or an uphill one. Variation? Well the Corkscrew Road climb has been exciting as it’s seen moves go and try to stay away; but coming with 6km to go it’s still all about the finale; ditto Fox Creek Road this year which was exciting but again with the action saved for the final ten minutes. Sprint finishes are fine, Bora-hansgrohe’s lead out train was impressive. It was a thrill to see Isaac Del Toro take a win; but once in a while it’d be exciting if an earlier move looked like it might stick, that moments of suspense lasted longer.

It’s very rare for a long range breakaway to make it, think Will Clarke’s 140km move in 2012; more recently Jay Vine did split things up in 2023 with a move with 22km on the stage to Victor Harbor. Seeing a stage win unfold with more than ten minutes to go is rare, even having a move caught after a nail-biting chase is rare

For those proud Australians taking this as criticism of the race, it is of sorts. But this is because I’d like to see more, it’s like a diner complaining about a restaurant by saying the food is good but the portions are tiny. Give me a feast, compel me to set my alarm much earlier, to watch more of the Tour Down Under, to enviously spend hours admiring the South Australian countryside. At least for one stage in the week.

So, what about Milan-Sanremo or all those other races?
Whatabouttery doesn’t make the Tour Down Under any better. But of course there are other predictable races. To pre-empty comments, yes Australians could set alarm clocks for the Poggio and catch plenty yet surely there wouldn’t be the same infusion of adrenaline. Sure there can be days grand tours which are very predictable but the point is there are other days with end to end action too. And the Flèche Wallonne is once a year.

The TDU was once a glorified training camp when riders would spin in the sun during the day and then sip or even sluice Shiraz in the evenings, but those days are gone as the regular road rash from riders fighting for position shows. The sport has changed too, everyone starts their season ready to race and bag precious UCI points. Long-range moves happen in the early season too, take Neilson Powless’s win in the GP La Marseillaise last January, going in the breakaway with an hour to go and spending the final 10 minutes dangling solo.

Easier said than done
So what to do? The peloton can’t contrive to put on a longer show and create suspense. But the course can help. A mountain mid-stage could blow the race to pieces but the last time I checked there aren’t any. More climbing has been tried but laps of Willunga or Lofty haven’t split the race up, it’s just made the final sprint finish more selective and that’s fine as it means the eventual overall winner satisfies us as the best rider. But it’s still action for the last six minutes. A longer stage could be tested, the increased distance of say, 180km one day. might play on the mind and legs alike and break the psychological pattern, the established script but it’s not certain.

In the other direction the prologue was an innovation last year but the race can’t have a full time trial stage because this would mean flying out two time trial bikes and various wheels, all for 20-30 minutes per rider and this logistical cost-benefit ratio usually explains why some races have road bike only TTs. Besides it’s not gripping TV as TT stages are rarely a success when it comes to ratings but at least we’d tune in earlier in order to be certain of watching the winning ride.

GRVL?
Maybe a gravel stage could spice things up and boost ratings? It’s feasible too given the Adelaide Hills abound with plenty of good gravel choices (areas with vineyards often do because they have gravelly soils and farm tracks). Indeed this year’s Tour Down Under had its own gravel ride, a test event for the future? These things have happened in other races before, the Strade Bianche tempted the Giro d’Italia into holding gravel stages; the Tour de France Femmes went to Troyes in 2022 for its gravel stage with the men’s race having gravel stage in Troyes next summer. But like a time trial stage there’s a logistics problem, it could mean bringing out more wheels and even special gravel bikes given manufacturers might insist their riders show off the appropriate model. So not easy either. But just as a prologue TT happens on road bikes only, maybe two or three gravel portions could feature. Put them at 40km from the finish and the final hour might be compelling and even if they are the gentlest sections the “anything could happen” aspect might lure more viewers.

Conclusion
I want more of the TDU not less. I’m already happy to get out of bed at four in the morning and sit in the freezing darkness to see the bright new peloton amid the verdant vineyards of the Adelaide Hills. But the problem is I can get up for the Tour Down Under and be back under the down blanket in 15 minutes and presumably viewers in Australia aren’t hooked for hours either.

The post Tour Done Under 15 Minutes first appeared on The Inner Ring.

Here are the tables showing how many UCI points are available in each road race. It’s not riveting but normally if you want to know how many points are on offer then you visit the UCI website, find the rules page, download the right PDF rulebook and scroll past 70 pages for the tables. Here they’re all on one page.

Last year saw big changes to the scales with the grand tours, monuments and world championships becoming even more lucrative. This year and in the coming seasons the difference is the participation rules, which Pro Team qualifies for what.

The table below is for the World Tour races, if it’s a stage race then it’s for the final overall classification. You can see the overall win in the Tour de France is the single biggest points haul in the sport, and among other things winning the Tour Down Under is more valuable that winning Itzulia Basque Country, according to the rankings:

Next comes the points per stage in the World Tour stage races. In 2023 this was doubled for the grand tours, plus across all stage races points get awarded well beyond first five or top three as before, it’s down to 15th place or 10th respectively. Win a stage race and stage wins and placings happen along the way so it reinforces the value of grand tours:

Next you can see points on offer for final place in the secondary competitions of a grand tour and other stage races, namely the mountains and points competition:

Next comes a daily award for leading a World Tour stage race, a nice bonus but one that’s surely worth more in publicity than points but again with the overall win and stage wins it helps compound things further, plus it just makes a day in the maillot jaune or maglia rosa more valuable points-wise:

Now comes arguably the most important table here because it’s for races outside the World Tour and this is where teams hunting points can find rewards thanks to the breadth of the calendar. We know the Tour de France has beaucoup points but the winner isn’t really targetting them, instead managers of teams trying stave off relegation or earn promotion will know the table below by heart. Here winning a stage race overall or winning a one day brings the same points haul, which makes one day races very important. The season-opening Challenge Majorca races are a good case study, they are each Class 1 races and so win one day’s racing and a rider banks 125 points, but if it was a stage race only the final overall would bring this many points:

The next two tables below shows the points on offer for stages in non-World Tour races and the daily points for leading the race too:

Below are the national championships, split into A and B groups, where A is defined as a nation that started at least one rider in the previous Men’s Elite world championship road race. These points matter because often when we look at the teams with few wins and placings in the year, several of their best results can be from national championships in smaller nations, the kind with only a few pros. Sometimes we’ve seen big name riders skip their national championships but smaller teams hunting points ought be paying business class returns for their riders to go and grab the jersey and points:

Now comes the Continental Championships, think the European championships for the best example. If these championships have a team time trial and/or a mixed relay time trial event, the small table further below also applies:

Now for the Worlds and Olympics, big events but the UCI is keen to big them up even more and they are the most lucrative one day races on the calendar in terms of points, 100 more than a Monument classic:

For the last of the tables, here’s the mixed relay time trial at the worlds which the UCI is keen on promoting, it’s 300 points but this is divided by the three men, so 100 points each (of course the women get 100 each too):

How to forfeit points
Riders can lose points too. The UCI rules include penalties for bad behaviour and some come with points deductions. They concern cheating like taking short-cut, to using sidewalks, ignoring level-crossing red lights, littering and other misdemeanours, right down to failing to sign on for the day’s racing or show up for the post-race press conference if invited. Any team manager worried about scoring points should remind riders of all of these.

Rankings and points don’t matter…
…if they did then they’d be readily available, easily understood and we’d talk about them more often. Still, promotion and relegation from the World Tour is a big deal as an “inside” topic. The one change for 2024 is that while invitations for the grand tours go to the two top-ranked Pro Teams of the previous season (Lotto-Dstny and IPT) and two discretionary “wildcards”, these two wildcards can only go to a team in the top-50 the previous season, in 2024 it’ll be top 40 and crucially in 2026 the top-30 which implies a stretch goal for the likes of current teams like Euskaltel-Euskadi or Corratec. In the coming days we’ll look at how these points are used to make individual and team rankings and the stakes in 2024 and beyond…

The post UCI Points And Rankings Tables first appeared on The Inner Ring.