During the stage to Aix-les-Bains, Laurent Jalabert and the ONCE team dropped out, followed by Banesto and Riso Scotti. Jean-Marie LeBlanc pleaded with the riders to continue. When they eventually finished the stage, the police tossed more hotels and more teams went home. Know one knew for sure if the Tour would even make it all the way to Paris, which it eventually did with about half the field remaining.

So, what were the riders actually protesting?

From the New York Times:

“They treated us like criminals, like animals,” said one of the Dutch team’s members, Jeroen Blijlevens. “They took Bart out of the shower, made us sign some papers and took us away,” he continued, referring to his roommate, Bart Voskamp. The riders were held more than four hours for the tests and released half an hour after midnight.

Blijlevens’ lament was the common theme. Bjarne Riis added, “The riders are not against the investigations, but they are against the way they are being treated. We have some dignity.” Of course, the subtext was clear.

There had been doping in cycling for as long as anyone could remember. The team-sanctioned programs “exposed” by the Festina Affair were so pervasive and so well organized that they couldn’t have existed without a lot of people looking the other way for a long time. Even TVM had gone on with business as usual for four months after French police had found “a huge quantity of illegal performance-enhancing drugs” in a team car.

And then the political winds changed, and guys couldn’t even have dinner after a 204km mountain stage before they were arrested and forced to provide blood, urine, and hair samples. The riders chafed at the hypocrisy, and that’s why they protested. At least, that’s how it seems to me.

Where are we now?

12 years and one Puerto later, conventional wisdom would have us believe that Festina-like team doping programs are a thing of a past. Most people in the sport seem to think that when riders dope, they do so as individuals. And reports have indicated “an overall lowering of the performance level in the Tour compared to the last 2 decades.”

Let’s say it’s all true. It’s also true that riders today generally accept as a necessary inconvenience a level of constant surveillance and testing that would have been shocking in 1998. Does that mean they’ve have gained the “dignity” they sought back then? It’s hard to argue that they have, although a more accurate statement might be that they’ve come to feel differently about their rights and the sacrifices they’re willing to make.

Postscript

On July 29, 1998, I was getting my ass kicked by some of world’s best juniors at the Tour de l’Abitibi in Quebec. I spent that week riding for a composite team sponsored by the local cycling club in the host town of Amos. All the riders stayed at the high school, sleeping on mattresses on the floor, one team to a classroom. In the evening, we crowded around a television in the school’s student lounge to watch the nightly 30-minute Tour de France recap on ESPN. Some of the top riders must have recognized that a wrench had been thrown into their future career plans.

I had no idea what to think.

THAT ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT

Let’s say you’re Alberto Contador. You’re 27 years old and you’ve already won the last four Grand Tours you’ve started. Your 2010 season is humming right along with GC wins at the Volta ao Algarve, Paris-Nice, and the Vuelta a Castilla y León. If everything goes according to plan, you might have another 3 or 4 years as the hands-down Best Rider In The World and another 3 or 4 after that when you’re still a threat to win every race you enter. Currently, you’ve got less than a year left with Astana. Then what?

Alberto’s best bet could be to build a new team around himself. Then he’s got all the financial upside, he can run the program the way he wants to, and he can control the risks to his liking. Actually, that’s probably a good approach for any major star in any team sport, except that in most sports it takes several years, a new stadium, and hundreds of millions of dollars to get in the game. And even then your expansion team will probably stink for at least a few years.

But among pro cycling’s many quirks are its low barriers to entry into the highest level of the sport. If you’ve got a PowerPoint presentation and connections, you can have a world-class team in the Tour de France in about a year. All you need is a title sponsor. Not that signing a multi-million dollar deal and starting a cycling team is a piece of cake, but it’s a lot easier than, say, starting an NBA franchise. Just look at the fast starts of new programs like Cervélo TestTeam, Team Sky, and – to a lesser extent – BMC Racing Team. When RadioShack separated from Astana, the addition of another team to the population was one of the least controversial aspects of the split.

So it would be pretty easy for Alberto to have his own team on the road next year and there have been rumors to that effect involving Formula 1 driver Fernando Alonso bringing Banco Santander as the sponsor. Also, it’s worth noting that Specialized’s personal contract with Contador was negotiated separately before the team deal with Astana was finalized.

But what are the benefits to Alberto of going it alone, compared to just signing the huge long-term contract that Astana reportedly offered? If you presume that Alberto’s image is the key selling point for most of the potential sponsors during the rest of this career – i.e. consumer brands, not Central Asian governments – there’s an economic efficiency to having his own team. Want to sponsor Alberto? Sponsor Team Alberto. Plus, eliminating the “middle man” role of the traditional team management gives the sponsor an assurance that the team’s main attraction won’t bolt unexpectedly a là Brad Wiggins. From an operational standpoint, there’s an appealing level of clarity in a team focused on a single rider. Everyone knows their job and is handpicked to do it.

The major financial upside of the star-centric team is the ability to negotiate personal endorsement deals concurrently with team sponsorships. The obvious case study is Lance Armstrong becoming the advertising face of The Shack while launching his own Team RadioShack. Meanwhile, other riders have to make do with whatever sponsors their team managers already have on board.

Of course, there aren’t very many riders with the star power to pull something like this together, let alone with willingness to accountable for actually running a team. Beyond Contador, the Schleck brothers reportedly have been mulling a similar venture and I could see it working for someone like Fabian Cancellara.

This summer’s Tour de France is the last in which the old crop of ProTour teams are guaranteed a spot. Starting next year, a new system will be in place. The more open it is, the more rider-owned teams I think we’ll see.

I also had a chance to interview one of the most influential, modernizing figures in pro cycling, Bjarne Riis.

And finally, there’s Joao Correia – the former associate publisher of Bicycling Magazine who’s now racing for Cervelo TestTeam.

Briefly… Team director Frankie Andreu quit. Contract disputes with industry sponsors. They didn’t actually sign Chris Horner. Operacion Puerto suspects barred from starting the Tour of California. That whole Mario Cipollini thing. Legal action on behalf of a clearly guilty Kayle Leogrande. Hiring Rudy Pevenage, then reportedly not paying him. Various flirtations with Floyd Landis that ended poorly for everyone. Accidentally registering as a Continental team instead of Professional Continental, which meant that they had too many riders. Running out of money and releasing riders as a cost-cutting measure. Getting sued by ex-riders. The list goes on and on.

After months of uncertainty over what kind of license Rock would hold for 2010 and in what country, the UCI finally announced last week that the team would not be granted a license at any UCI level. Mr. Ball seems to think that he’s been marginalized because of his aggressive personality and willingness to give second chances to past dopers. There’s likely some truth to his assertion, but I draw a couple additional conclusions.

The sponsor shouldn’t own the team. I wrote in more detail about this topic a while back, but the basic idea is that teams, riders, and staff have a stronger safety net when the sponsor is on the hook to fund the team for the duration of its contract. But in a case like Rock Racing, budget cuts at Rock & Republic meant layoffs of team staff and riders – even though UCI rules say that teams can only terminate riders’ contracts “in the event of serious misconduct on the part of the Rider or of the suspension of the Rider.” (see PDF) I have to imagine that was a major factor in the UCI’s decision to deny the team’s 2010 license application.

As always, know your audience. Rock Racing’s strategy aimed to capitalize on previously unmet demand for corporate memorobilia blending Hollywood trash-glam, Hot Topic angst, Michael Ball’s middle finger, and professional cycling. No one’s buying. Perhaps not surprisingly, people who follow bike racing typically don’t have much in common with people who wear $300 jeans with winged skulls embroidered on the butt. I’m not optimistic for Rock’s new bike line, either.

Ball should have learned from the mistakes of Sean Tucker and the United Pro Cycling Team. Instead, Rock Racing followed the doomed model of creating a brand for a cycling team before creating a cycling team.

In 2008, the Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld Webster’s right to join Wigan Athletic in the English Premier League before the final season of his contract with Scotland’s Heart of Midlothian. The resulting Article 17 of FIFA’s transfer regulations requires a financial penalty in all such cases and a 4-6 month suspension may be applied. The regulations also ban the new team from signing any other new players for a year.

Labor laws rightly prevent the FIFA system from giving a lot of power to the jilted team. Instead, the system functions by providing disincentives against the rogue athlete and his new team. As a result of the hefty financial and sporting penalties, “Webster rule” cases have been pretty rare. By comparison, the UCI’s disincentives are underwhelming. According to Cyclingnews:

International Cycling Union (UCI) regulations state that a rider cannot sign with a new team while they are under a valid contract unless they have the express permission of the UCI. The regulations also state that a team signing a rider who is already under contract can face a fine of up to 30,000 Swiss Francs, with the rider himself subject to a fine of between 300 and 2000 Swiss Francs.

Granted, the rider and his new team still have to negotiate a contract buyout. But even with that expense, the UCI system – or lack thereof – does almost nothing to protect teams like Skil-Shimano and Garmin. Apparently, Pat McQuaid is “looking at” this but he doesn’t sound so enthusiastic about it.

Check out the next issue of ROAD Magazine for my thoughts on what an effective rider transfer system would look like. On newsstands March 9.

Although this piece isn’t really about major bike industry brands like Scott, this shift in their messaging from the 2009 (left) to 2010 VeloNews Buyer’s Guides is perhaps related.

At the time that the 2009 ad would have been due, Scott was just starting their sponsorship and might not have had a chance to do a photo shoot with the team now known as HTC-Columbia. Scott still chose a racing & performance theme for the ad. A year later, they kept an element of performance (lightweight) but went with comfort and a non-racer (i.e. a VeloNews reader), even after Columbia’s 86-win season.

COLUMN

This piece appears in the current issue of ROAD Magazine that’s been out for a couple of weeks. It was written in October 2009.

A business theorist named Peter Drucker once wrote that an enterprise has two essential functions: marketing and innovation. Until quite recently, this philosophy dominated the segment of the bike industry that focuses on road cyclists who could be described as “moderate-to-heavy users”. However, there now seems to be a backlash against the innovation part of Drucker’s dictum as newly influential players emphasize nostalgia rather than performance. But how far will this new aesthetic carry them?

The notion that serious cyclists want increasingly high-performance equipment underpins how high-end cycling products are developed and promoted. It’s an arms race to create the lightest, fastest, most aerodynamic merchandise and sign the most successful athletes to endorse it. We’ll call this the modernist approach. As a result of it, we see things like the massive reshuffling of teams and bike sponsors that took place last year (2008) and the deluge of slick time trial bikes that inundated us this year (2009).

Not surprisingly, the messages from these companies pretty much boil down to, “buy this and win.” There’s probably such an ad on the page opposite this column. Of course, the industry knows that the majority of serious cyclists don’t race, at least not formally. Nonetheless, the common assumption has been that these consumers desire the same qualities in their bikes, components, and accessories as professional racers do. But this assumption is eroding.

Welcome to postmodern road cycling.

This new aesthetic – shaped by Rapha, Embrocation Magazine, the North American Handmade Bicycle Show, and others – is not a merely rejection of the ubiquitous modernist aesthetic. No one is advocating a return to toe clips and down tube shifters. Instead, the postmodern view of the sport filters the most evocative, iconic elements of cycling’s past through an artistic lens.

So, while cycling’s modernism lives in the present with the stars of today and looks to the features and technologies of tomorrow, postmodernism aims to be timeless. And it’s striking a chord.

I see two significant factors enabling this trend. First is the recognition that the modernist approach is disconnected from the ways in which most people actually ride. The values that it embodies – competition and technology – are still relevant. But perhaps more so are the things that modernism eschews – camaraderie and simplicity. It’s this emphasis that allows postmodernism to deemphasize Drucker-esque innovation.

At the same time, legitimate innovation in the road cycling market is harder and harder to achieve. After a flurry of advancements a few years ago, it’s now possible to buy an inexpensive, unbranded carbon frame from Asia that’s lighter and stiffer than pretty much every frame that was ever produced prior to around 2006. Consumers know this.

These factors open the door for postmodernism, which in turn opens doors for new definitions of what it means to be a serious cyclist, which in turn open doors for more people to become serious cyclists. Additionally, postmodernism has low barriers to entry. It takes a lot less money to shoot beautiful pictures of epic riding than it does to sponsor a ProTour team.

The sum of all these elements is a sense of nostalgia like the one that was famously described on Mad Men as, “a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone… It takes us to a place where we ache to go again.” If it can maintain that feeling, cycling’s postmodern aesthetic has the potential to cause a significant shift in how the bike industry approaches both marketing and innovation.

Granted, Kristof’s photo was the one that I used in my blog post and he mentioned the poll on Twitter and Facebook. So that gave him a leg up, for sure. Regardless, here’s what he had to say for himself.

How did you get started with the cycling photography project?

I live in Belgium, that alone should explain a lot… Having a passion for cycling is second nature to many of my countrymen. I’m no exception to that rule.

I’ve been working as a (TV)video-director for fifteen years now and during that period I’ve made several pieces on cycling for national tv. Almost 2 years ago I expanded my business and became a professional photographer (commercial and editorial portraits). So now I’m a director and a photographer. As a photographer I grew quickly and acquired new techniques, but wasn’t able to use them to the fullest in my professional work. Being a creative person I really needed these techniques to come out and decided to devote more time into personal projects so I could develop a personal style (without somebody imposing limits)

I quickly decided I wanted to portray (top/ProTour) riders… because that would combine 2 passions: cycling & photography. But one thing was clear to me from the start: I would make NO compromises on how I would portray them AND it couldn’t be in a traditional way… the pictures had to have something ‘different’ about them. That’s when I decided to portray the riders JUST BEFORE the race; when they were preparing to go to the start. I hadn’t seen a series like that before.

Choosing this approach had some other advantages. The most important being: riders have to prepare and wait BEFORE a race. That meant I had more chances of actually meeting them in a relatively relaxed mood. NO WAY this would’ve been possible AFTER a race…

Was it hard to get access at the races?

As mentioned before; I live in (Cycling Crazy) Belgium. From the end of march until early october there are, almost constantly, cycling races (with world-class riders) I can attend within a 100 mile radius of my home.
As soon as the road-races stop, cyclo-cross takes over. Again: at least 3 races a week with all the top riders (over the last 12 years Belgium won 10 world-championships…)

Cycling is an extremely crowd-friendly sport. Riders are very accessible and even with the top-riders you can easily get lucky if you are a little persistent (but always respectful!). Organisers in Belgium don’t have the habit of keeping the crowd away from team-busses at the start of races. So, if you look around and pay attention you can easily walk up to a rider and ask him if you can make a portrait… easy as 123! Although I light my ‘portraits’ with a softbox, they are made very fast: I always make sure I only ‘take’ about 15 seconds of a riders time and I always wish them the best of luck. I work with an assistant to be able to do this.

I was able to do this whole series without any accreditation whatsoever.

Did the riders and teams like how the photos came out?

I heard from some riders that they really liked what I did (via Twitter and via some personal contacts). I was able to send some riders their pictures, wich was nice.

Also the (overall) response after putting them on Flickr and Facebook has been enormous! I simply couldn’t believe how many people reacted and saw them. As a direct result of these pictures it landed me a job with a Belgian manufacturer of cycling-wear and I ended up doing (and restyling) their new catalog. That was simply fantastic!

Now there are plans of perhaps doing a book and an exhibition… these plans are still in a very early stage, but it’s all very exiting!

What’s your take on “mainstream” cycling photography?

If I look at pictures in Procycling or CycleSport I mainly see the same (decent) pictures over and over again. I’m not too bothered with that, but I don’t see much variety. In the case of Procycling there also seems to be but ONE (main) supplier of images: (my countryman) Tim DeWaele. He’s a very good cycling photographer, but it’s pretty straightforward photography. That of course is not his fault, but the photo-editors’. At least have several photographers contribute, to have a variety of styles at their disposal. Tim DeWaele and Graham Watson seem to be the only players in that segment of the market: very good craftsmen who’ve earned their stripes, but 2 is simply too few to cover the enormous range of posibilities.

I’d love to see a cycling magazine that combines the styles of different photographers such as: Stephan Vanfleteren, Tim Kölnn, Brent Humphreys, Simon Keitch, Ken Conley, Geoff Waugh, … that would bring the spirit/passion of cycling onto the pages instead of the more ‘newslike’ pictures that dominate the mainstream cycling magazines today.

I’d also love to see what photographers from different disciplines (skating/surfing/…) would bring to the table if they were to do cycling pics…

Notes

Second place in the poll went to Catherine Wygal’s image of the peloton crossing the Golden Gate Bridge in the pouring rain during the 2009 Tour of California.

Obviously, I’m a fan of Kristof’s work and I think his body of work was the freshest portrayal of cycling that I saw this year. But among the individual images in the poll, I’d have to give the slightest of edges to Walter Bendix Schönflies’ image from Paris-Roubaix.

Thanks to everyone who voted and congratulations to all the photographers who took an unconventional approach to shooting in cycling in 2009.