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Peter Sagan — the Best Tour de France Rider Since Eddy Merckx?

Peter Sagan has 12 Tour de France stage wins to his credit, and has won a record seven sprinter’s green jerseys. But despite these other-worldly results, his metronomic consistency at the Tour is almost criminally underrated. Despite “only” being ranked 16th on the list of Tour de France stages won with 12 stage wins, the three-time world champion holds an astonishingly high “podium rate” in mass-start stages of 33 percent, with 45 individual podium finishes. This means that for every one in three times Sagan lines up at a (non-time trial) Tour de France stage, he lands himself somewhere on the podium. This is even more impressive when we recall that he has never finished on the podium in a mountain stage – which can make up about a third of the event’s overall stages. This raw figure is obviously impressive, but to put it into perspective, Alejandro Valverde, Mr....

PeopleForBikes Is Changing With the Industry

Most people around the American cycling scene are at least vaguely aware of PeopleForBikes (PFB). We see the PFB logo on a tee shirt or cap or a bike jersey here and there. We hear the name in the cycling press now and then – usually about some sort of broader community effort or political initiative. But many people don’t really understand exactly what PeopleForBikes is – what the organization consists of, and what it actually does to help us, as either enthusiasts or serious cyclists? Below, we explore the mission and activities of PFB against the broader backdrop of changes going on in cycling today. We also ask what we as cyclists can do to help the organization? PeopleForBikes is an industry coalition made up of 280 cycling-industry members, and some 1,000 Ride Spot retailer members, along with a cycling community of almost 1.4 million individual riders. It was founded...

Predicting How the New Wada Code Will Impact Cycling

Anti-doping is both simple and complex. The simple perspective is this: don’t take any banned drugs or use any banned methods, make yourself available for testing when requested, get any TUEs in advance, avoid contaminated supplements and medicines, and you’ll be fine. The complex perspective, on the other hand, is illustrated by the new World Anti-Doping Code – 180 pages, 27 Articles with six associated international standards. The 2021 code will be the fourth one, with the previous codes being issued in 2003, 2009 and 2015. While it may be advisable that athletes become familiar with these documents, it is easy to understand why that is a very challenging prospect. This article outlines some of the key changes which will come into force on January 1, 2021, and which could potentially affect cyclists. The new code: Much of it remains the same, notably the four-year ban for a...

Returning to cycling after a COVID-19 infection

Elite cycling emerged from hibernation on May 21, 2020, when Andreas Leknessund won the Klatrekongen Fuel of Norway race, the first professional bike race since the European coronavirus lockdown, and an eternity since Colombian sprinter Fernando Gaviria earned the distinction of being the first notable professional rider to test positive for COVID-19 some three months earlier. While many areas of the world are still being battered by COVID-19, European professional racing is starting to delicately navigate the ever-changing conditions of this global pandemic, hopefully, en-route to a dizzying array of late summer events, culminating with the grand tours later in the fall. Ultimately, these plans will hinge on meticulous rider and team testing, and testing will almost surely disclose more cases of COVID-19 within the peloton. This will become a new fact of life; indeed, the situation is...

Bicycles for Humanity, Revisited

Pat Montani has been a successful technology entrepreneur for most of his professional life, having built up and sold various telecommunications companies, while making significant advances in the field of video conferencing and cloud computing services in the process. But in the mid-2000s, the Canadian businessman began looking at how he might be able to leverage his business acumen and financial connections to benefit a greater good. Virtually overnight, he and his wife Brenda founded an initiative called Bicycles for Humanity – better known today as B4H – and kicked off an empowerment-based movement that has brought education, commercial opportunities, and improved healthcare to many underserved and impoverished communities around the world. But were it not for a chance introduction to the late Paul Sherwen at the start of the project, B4H might not have evolved as quickly, or...

Licensed Team Apparel Sales a Missed Revenue Opportunity

The global financial fallout from COVID-19 continues to disrupt professional cycling’s traditional sponsorship model, and has already thrown top-flight teams like CCC and Mitchelton-Scott into uncertain futures. As a result, there needs to be a stronger impetus for teams to explore alternative revenue streams in order to insulate themselves from the whims of wealthy benefactors and corporate sponsors. One such under-appreciated revenue opportunity is the sale of officially licensed team gear. This is a potential revenue source often overlooked despite the cycling community’s widespread obsession with the latest and most advanced clothing and equipment. Historically there has only been marginal commercial interest in monetizing current-season team kits (although there is a very successful market for historic team kits, through retailers like Prendas Ciclismo)....