When the EF Pro Cycling team joined forces with Rapha a couple of years ago and first announced their plans for a so-called “alternative calendar,” it got a decidedly mixed response. Elite pro riders taking time off to go to local mass participation events like Dirty Kanza and Leadville? What if they won the event – how popular was that going to be amongst the crowd of amateur enthusiasts? Or what if they showed up and didn’t win – they’re professionals after all? What if someone got injured when they were off on one of these larks, and couldn’t participate in their regular WorldTour schedule – what were sponsors going to say then? To many skeptics, there seemed to be a lot more questions than answers. But after one year of the “alt-cal,” a retrospective look suggests that the program was actually a resounding success. And before the COVID-19 era set in, the team was looking to expand...