2023-10-18 12:07:00
Olav Kooij raising his arms, Milan Vader winning the general classification. The Tour of Guangxi, the final World Tour race of the season, concluded as a symbol a year 2023 largely dominated by the Jumbo-Visma, winner in particular of the Giro, the Tour and the Vuelta. We can also add the UAE to form a pair of tyrants of the peloton. Dutch and Emiratis have triumphed in 126 races, for a combined win ratio of 35%, and share many of the most prestigious laurels. To the point that we wonder if this ultra-domination will not, one day, become harmful to cycling.
The time has come for assessments and these obviously go in one direction only. While in 2022, the best mark stood at 48 victories for UAE-Team Emirates ahead of the 47 for Jumbo-Visma and Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl, in 2023, the three exceeded 55. And if the number does not was not enough to understand the extent of the domination, that of the different riders to have won in each team helps to see it more clearly.
TeamsNumber of wins1. Jumbo-Visma69 (with 14 riders)2. UAE Team-Emirates57 (with 17 riders)3. Soudal-Quick Step55 (with 14 runners)4. INEOS Grenadiers36 (with 17 runners)5. Alpecin-Deceuninck35 (with 7 runners)6. Lidl-Trek27 (with 10 runners)7. EF Education-EasyPost26 (with 12 riders)8.BORA-Hansgrohe23 (with 14 riders9. Intermaché – Circus – Wanty20 (with 9 riders10. Groupama-FDJ19 (with 10 riders)
So, winning a lot with many different men is reserved for the elite. From this point of view, Jumbo, UAE and Soudal do better than the others, and only INEOS can try to compete. “For there to be the last, there must be the first,” smiles Marc Madiot, manager of Groupama-FDJ. “Whether it is the wealthiest who win is a correlation. When you have means to have many good runners, it makes life easier.”
Fortunately, there is Van der Poel…
In detail, we notice that Alpecin-Deceuninck defends itself well in terms of number of bouquets but owes a lot to its duo Jasper Philipsen, the most prolific rider of the season (19 successes), and Mathieu van der Poel. The Dutchman, if he wins little (5 times in 2023), is one of the only ones who can break the hegemony of the best teams in the biggest races. He won Milan-Sanremo, Paris-Roubaix and the Worlds while UAE, thanks to Tadej Pogacar, won the Tour of Flanders and the Tour of Lombardy and Remco Evenepoel completed, for Soudal-Quick Step, its collection of Liège-Bastogne-Liège (2 now).
This one, he will remember: Van der Poel’s victory at the Vélodrome
Let’s go further to see that Jumbo-Visma and UAE have won 8 of the 15 other one-day races on the World Tour calendar. And on stage events, the ratio even climbs to 9 out of 12 for these two teams. Finally, let us remember that Jumbo-Visma triumphed in the three grand tours and that it, with UAE and INEOS, monopolized all the places on the podium of the Giro, the Tour and the Vuelta. Only three teams is half as many as in 2022 and 2021 (6 teams on the podium).
Madiot: “The Jumbo hat-trick in the Vuelta can quickly become a problem”
“The Jumbo hat-trick in the Vuelta can quickly become a problem,” notes Madiot. “We should all be able to have access to an interesting level of talent.” On this same Tour of Spain, the latter had, on our microphone, estimated that the Jumbo-Visma had, in its workforce, “15 riders who might be leaders elsewhere”. Refusing the suspicion of doping, the manager of Groupama-FDJ pointed out budget disparities which were beginning to resemble what happens in football. Enough to ultimately harm, according to him, the interest in racing.
Madiot on the domination of Jumbo: “It’s above all a question of budget!”
Asked regarding a possible weariness of the public, Madiot cites the example of Formula 1 which this year experienced a second season of domination by Max Verstappen and Red Bull while seeing its audiences decline. What solution then? A salary cap? “Why not,” he replies, “we have to see with the UCI. But we French have another problem to resolve. When we are faced with foreign competition, we bear the social cost of our model. Which has helped us during Covid penalizes us the rest of the time.”
And yet, Roglic is gone
Jumbo-Visma’s struggles to find a new sponsor also showed, through the absurd, that the economy of cycling is fragile. Madiot also fears, in the long term, the fall of the system: “In France, we have partners who invest reasonably to get a return on investment. Moreover, they stay longer. Elsewhere, some come out of the desire to a person, an emir, a billionaire. If this person withdraws, a wall will collapse. The arms race will come to an end, we will not be able to follow those who have no limits. That can be worrying, we are on a house of cards which might collapse quickly.”
“I’m going to leave the team”: Roglic announced his departure from Jumbo-Visma at the end of the season
Sometimes, however, having a big budget doesn’t allow you to retain all your talents. Jumbo-Visma, which will become Visma-Lease a Bike in 2024, might obviously have kept Primoz Roglic. But the Slovenian did not appreciate not being able to fight regularly once morest Sepp Kuss and Jonas Vingegaard in the last Vuelta. Refusing this peace of the brave, he went to BORA-Hansgrohe to be leader at the start of the next Tour de France. An arrival which, it seems, would not have pleased Cian Uijtdebroeks, gem of the German team, who perhaps fears seeing Roglic overshadow him in the future. The distribution of talents also perhaps goes through this.
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