You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
Most cyclists are losers. 2,648 different riders have managed<br />
to complete the Tour de France and yet only 62 of them have ever<br />
won it. The rest of them are losers. That’s a win rate of 0.023%. It’s<br />
roughly the same ratio for every other cycling race you can think<br />
of. You could say that it’s also true of other sports. I haven’t done<br />
the maths on all of them but I’d imagine you could find similar<br />
numbers of losers in tennis or golf. But this is where cycling<br />
differs. The winner wins and he often wins alone. But he cannot<br />
do so without his team. For so many reasons, the fact that cycling<br />
is a team sport but a single rider crosses the finish line makes it<br />
interesting. Not merely because it gives us this abundance of<br />
losers, but mainly because most of them are not even trying to win.<br />
Of course, I’m being ridiculous just to hoik you in. I know and<br />
you know they are not<br />
losers – far from it. The<br />
domestiques that shape<br />
the sport are some of<br />
”Most cyclists are losers”<br />
the hardest bastards in<br />
it and quite often put in<br />
even more work, produce<br />
more watts and suffer a<br />
lot more than the team<br />
leader they’re working for. They’re not ‘unsung’ heroes. There is<br />
a very wide appreciation and acknowledgement of the work that<br />
they do. When a team leader wins, often the first thing they do is<br />
praise the effort of their teammates.<br />
But how do we know who are the best domestiques? For team<br />
leaders, it’s straightforward – race wins. There can be some debate<br />
about quality vs. quantity and there are different types of riders<br />
who can win different types of races. But ultimately, the races<br />
a leader wins will define him. For everyone else there is no such<br />
measure. How do you measure the contribution of a domestique?<br />
How much credit can Egan Bernal take for Geraint Thomas’s Tour<br />
de France win last year? How much credit should Mark Renshaw<br />
take for all the times he led Mark Cavendish toward the last 300<br />
metres?<br />
A simple measure would be the volume of ‘assists’ a rider<br />
produces. That is, how many times a rider takes a part in a race and<br />
one of their teammates manages to win it.<br />
14
Change language