Road cycling has changed. The races are getting faster and faster. This has to do with a new generation of drivers and a changed mentality.
“Road cycling is so boring. Nothing happens for the first 100 km. Only then do the races begin,” said Mathieu van der Poel to the sports show, when he was still fresh off the mountain bike, where the wild chase tends to begin right at the starting gun changed street. The great talent from the Netherlands developed a recipe for success against his own boredom: He simply attacks early, 40, 60 or 80 km before the finish line and thus disperses the field.
That brings him great victories, some bitter defeats – and a lot of respect from the competition. “The way he drives makes staring at the wattmeter completely useless in the race,” commented veteran Vincenzo Nibali van der Poel’s fantastic acceleration during his victory in the clay road classic Strade Bianche 2021.
Early attacks as a recipe for success in classics and grand tours
Van der Poel isn’t the only one doing this. Two-time Tour de France winner Tadej Pogacar is also a friend of early attacks. A daring 40km break away saw him climb the podium on the penultimate day of the 2019 Tour of Spain. The fact that he was able to take off the yellow jersey of the Tour de France in 2020 from Primoz Roglic in the time trial on the Planche des Belles Filles was thanks to a 15 km solo ride in the Pyrenees.
There he made up the time he had lost on the wind crest the day before. And the Slovenian made a preliminary decision in the 2021 Tour de France with a nearly 30 km solo on the 8th stage to Le Grand-Bornand. “We need more early attacks. That makes the races more exciting, for us drivers and for the spectators,” said Pogacar later.
He also implements his own demands well. This spring he won the Strade Bianche with a solo ride over 50 km. He also seemed to have the Tour of Flanders already in his pocket with accelerations 50 and 33 km before the finish. Then he gambled in the final sprint against the other race animator van der Poel.
From this it can be deduced: Early attacks do not always lead to victory, even for drivers who can pedal the highest watt values for a long time and still have reserves of speed afterwards.
Change of mentality of an entire sport
But the mentality with which leaders like Pogacar and van der Poel approach racing has changed the whole industry.
“Both are fantastic drivers. And they also radiate to many other young racers. You can feel that with us too. And because our young drivers tick differently, we have adapted our strategies and drive much more aggressively,” admitted David Brailsford himself , Patron of the Ineos Grenadiers racing team, the sports show.
You don’t always see the new aggressiveness with Ineos. The squad drove the Giro d’Italia quite conservatively this year – and lost with top driver Richard Carapaz against the more innovative Bora hansgrohe team around the new top man Jai Hindley. But Ineos had won the 2020 Giro in catch-up attack mode with Tao Geoghegan Hart. And the way the squad used a wind crest at Paris-Roubaix this year to split the field in two with just 200 km to go was first class.
“The young drivers are different now. They are better trained than their peers ten years ago. They have more self-confidence and they want to win. This attitude is transferred to the entire team. It makes us all younger again,” said the 58- year-old Brailsford to the sports show and in all his joy seemed very youthful himself.
Mentality can be read in numbers
The new mode can even be read in numbers. The early attacks and the associated chase of the pursuers leads to faster and faster races. This year’s editions of the Paris-Roubaix and Liège-Bastogne-Liège classics were the fastest in the history of these races, with average speeds of 45.79 and 41.41 km/h. Milan-San Remo was the second fastest at 45.33 km/h and the other monuments ranked in the top 10 in history with their 2022 times.
This is remarkable because the classics are classics because they are mostly held on the same streets for many years. Times are therefore easier to compare than on the tours with an ever-changing course. But here, too, the trend is clear. The last Tour de France was the second fastest in history ever. Only in 2005 was Lance Armstrong, with an average speed of 41.65 km/h, slightly faster than Tadej Pogacar’s 41.16 km/h last year. However, Pogacar was also faster than Armstrong in six of his seven disallowed Tour victories.
And Pogacar 2021 was faster than everyone else anyway. That was due to his early attack on stage 8. But van der Poel also made the race faster than usual on the 7th stage with the breakaway group he had initiated. Of course, speed in cycling makes the doping sirens ring out again. The fact that not a single WorldTour rider has been caught since the tests were taken over by the international testing agency ITA and that police investigations, such as the recent operation “Clean Test” in Portugal, have led to the conviction of doping offenders, does not ease the situation either.
But one reason for the faster races can also be earlier attacks. At the 2022 Tour de France, too, you can look forward to stages where you attack very early on.
Even racing teams without a superstar attack early
This variant is now part of the tactics of many teams, even if they do not have exceptional drivers like Pogacar or van der Poel. The German racing team Bora-hansgrohe, for example, blew up the peloton early on on the famous 14th stage of the Giro d’Italia 2022 to Turin with a collective attack by five drivers. “Actually, we only did it because we wanted to get ahead of the other teams,” said Bora’s sporting director Jens Zemke of the sports show.
The expectation of attacks from others is already driving the racing teams to bring forward their own attack plans – what a dynamic! Bora’s Turin performance could also be the tactical template to keep an exceptional driver like Pogacar from the third tour win in a row: attack massively earlier than even the Slovenian thinks possible, and thus put him under pressure.