Much as we might try to deny it, cycling is a sport that tends towards monopoly. More often than not there is a rider who dominates – a Beryl Burton, an Eddy Merckx or a Marianne Vos. If we’re lucky there is a plucky underdog or two. The 1970s was full of people who truly if wrongly believed that Raymond Poulidor would win the Tour de France.
And if we’re luckier, the dominating star will have a chink in their armour – they suck at cobbles, say, or they can’t time a sprint. But in truth the golden eras of unpredictable racing are usually just little interregnums while we wait for the next behemoth rider or team to arrive.
Best selling author and aero expert, Dr Hutch was a multiple national champion in time trialling, but definitely wasn’t a phenomenon.
I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be a behemoth. At this year’s men’s World Championship road race, or at the European Champs race that was only a week later, it wasn’t hard to imagine the feelings of second-placed Remco Evenepoel – the “not again” and the “what do I have to do?” feelings that we all have sometimes watching Tadej Pogačar. But what goes through Pogačar’s head?
Is he like me, I wonder? Because I’d love to be that talented, but I don’t think it would be good for me. If I was the world’s best rider, I’m confident my main concern would be that the only direction for my career to go in next would be downwards. It would produce a very defensive attitude to life.
I’d be paranoid that I’d pick up an injury or an illness, or that I’d burn out and stop being the sort of person who can just get on with the training and the travel and the work. Or that whatever ephemeral thing it is that made me that good would simply vanish as it had arrived, and one day I’d be normal.
There is no way I’d really enjoy being a phenomenon. In my state of paranoia I’d want to rack up the wins as fast as I could, and with as little gambling as possible. I’d work out my best strategy, and stick with it. In my case I’d attack early, drive home an advantage, get a minute’s gap and then just sit on it till the finish. I appreciate that that’s exactly what Pogačar does, but he’s maybe a bit less Gollum-esque about it than I would be. (“My precious minute…”) And I would not care that I was maybe sucking the interest out of the races.
I would, on the other hand, care very much about the possibility of someone coming along who might beat me, and I would jealously survey the youngsters coming up. I’d have used all my influence to make sure that Isaac Del Toro got no further up the UAE team roster than bus janitor.
I’ll be honest and say that I generally assume everyone is like this, and that anyone who appears otherwise is just pretending. But there are clues that suggest Pogačar might not be pretending. His willingness to take on Paris-Roubaix seems important – that implies a true competitive instinct with none of the sort of risk-averse mean-spiritedness I’d bring to being a behemoth.
His cheery demeanour after races betrays none of the sour relief at having safely landed another win that I might have, and the fact that he seems able to lose in reasonably good humour backs that up.
And I find all of this worrying. It suggests that he really feeds off the competition, that he actually enjoys it, that he thinks about things more optimistic than just the horrible day when he slides off his perch. And I’m not sure I can cope with talented and nice. Of course, like the imaginary-talented-me, he doesn’t care if you’re bored with his domination. We would have that much in common at least
Great inventions of cycling – Nostalgia
Cycling is not so much a sport or a pastime as a means for manufacturing nostalgia. The day after he invented the pedal cycle, its creator (we’re not really sure who it was) can be safely assumed to have looked back with fondness on the previous day, when his invention was a little newer, the sky was a little bluer, and every rider he passed waved back.
Or would have done if there had been such a thing as another rider. It’s all been going downhill ever since. And back then, young whippersnappers, the descents were properly surfaced so going downhill was much nicer than today. By the 1890s, gentlemen of a certain age (that age being about 28) looked back fondly to the age of the penny-farthing that had passed into the mists of time five years earlier.
The good old hairy-cheeked days. A gentleman 10 years older again would tell him he was wrong, and that bicycles should still be made out of wood. No era of cycling is as great as the era when the reminiscer was new to the sport. Demographics mean that the bell-curve of nostalgia has a median around 30 years ago. This is why right now there’s a quietly increasing level of nostalgia for the EPO-soused racing of the mid 1990s and a growing demand for overpriced steel bikes painted to look like a 1990s rave. Give it another 20 years or so, and every rider you see will be equipped with a Team Sky jersey and a pair of Wiggins sideburns.
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