All Work And No Gain?

It’s always been a part of professional cycling, but it’s a phenomenon that’s come under fire lately – the question of who chases versus who wins.

It’s very much a question of the sprinters. Traditionally, when a team has a sprinter that they believe can win the stage, the onus is on their team to chase down the breakaway as they’re the team who’ll benefit. When a team does it well, the rewards are obvious – a stage win for the sprinter and a morale boost for the whole team.

But what about when they don’t win the stage? It was an ever-present concern for Australian outfit Orica-GreenEDGE during the Tour de France. The team often spent more than 100 kilometres leading the peloton in an attempt to reel in the day’s breakaway to set up a stage win for sprinter Matt Goss. Belgian outfit Lotto Belisol would jump on the front with 10 kilometres to go, still fresh after the day’s stage, and lead German sprinter André Greipel out for the win. It happened more than once. So is that good strategy and clever riding from the Belgian team, or are the others teams taking advantage of Orica-GreenEDGE?

Peter Sagan is another recent example of the issue. The Slovakian doesn’t have a leadout train – at least, nothing on the scale of Orica-GreenEDGE, Lotto Belisol or at times even Team Sky – yet the 22-year-old still claimed three stages of the Tour de France ahead of Greipel and Goss, as well as almost every stage of the Tour of California. Sagan usually tacks onto the end of the nearest sprinter being towed to the line and jumps out when everyone is least expecting it, using the work of Goss, Greipel or Cavendish’s teams. Again, is this a remarkably canny move on the part of the youngster, or are Sky, Lotto and GreenEDGE being deprived of their just rewards?

Cavendish certainly seems to think so. The ‘world’s fastest man’, a title verified by his stripey rainbow jersey of the reigning World Champion, recently hit out at Australia over the lack of effort they put into the chase during the Olympic road race – despite the fact that Australia had a rider in the breakaway, six-time Olympian Stuart O’Grady. Cavendish was highly critical of the other teams for failing to help pull back the breakaway, conveniently forgetting that, like Australia, almost every other country capable of helping had a rider ahead of the peloton with a chance at the gold medal. There was another reason Great Britain was on their own – everyone knew that if it came down to a sprint finish, there was no-one who could beat the Manx Missile, Mark Cavendish. If Great Britain wanted the win, Great Britain had to do all the work – and even then, they knew everyone else would be racing them to the finish. It really was them versus the world.

So are the times changing? Is it now professionally acceptable to let another team or rider do all the work so you can take the win? Has the sport of cycling abandoned the ‘no guts, no glory’ ideal that brought about some of the greatest cycling victories we’ve seen in favour of a ‘end justifies the means’ approach to racing? What remains to be seen is this: who will do the work if they know there’s nothing to gain?