The first billet cycling was imposed long before the Jumbo Visma
It is curious the debate about cycling that arises like Groundhog Day every time a team dominates the Vuelta a España like Jumbo Visma is doing.
And it is curious, among other things because, either they deceive us, or The investment numbers released by the World Tour teams do not show Jumbo as the wealthiest block of current cycling, in any case, the third and with other blocks very close to them in investment, but far away in results.
“Team Sky would sign Purito as a gregarious person”
What garden have Contador and Flecha gotten into regarding the salary cap in cycling #LaVuelta23— JoanSeguidor (@JoanSeguidor) September 7, 2023
The debate that Javier Ares had the other day on Eurosport was interesting, with Flecha and Contador in a kind of loop about who spent more ten years ago, when I believe that Team Sky, today Ineos, has always been the only and clear reference in terms of spendingto the point that they entered cycling by paying a clause, that of Wiggins to Vaughters’ team.
Paying a clause in cycling is not something that is very common, rather on rare occasions.
Having said all this, I think that the debate, at least as far as it was concerned, seemed sterile to me.
Jumbo has means and money, it is obvious, but also a brutal conversion rateas Nacho Labarga explained in Marca the other day.
The secrets of the Jumbo Visma, the kings of cycling ????????♂️????
Several voices from the platoon analyze the ‘yellow wasps’ in @BRAND ????
????️ “Never before has the same team won the big three”
A report of @nacholabarga ✍????
— MARCA Sports Center (@MarcaTMF) September 10, 2023
Others with more, did much less.
Added to this is that not even Team Sky or US Postal, to speak of large pastures, invented uneven cycling, which I believe has been the case since its first days.
We have the first clear precedent in the mid-eighties, with Bernard Tapie – they released a series on Netlix about his life – and his La Vie Claire.
Tapie was the catalyst for all that and brought cycling to million-dollar audiences.
Checkbook cycling had a precedent in this controversial character.
La Vie Claire had cycling’s most peculiar patron until the arrival of the capricious Russian, Oleg Tinkov.
Bernard Tapie, a guy who in “La France” in the eighties, who wanted to touch the sun because he believed he was God and ended up burned.
However, along the way he had succulent stories and some related to cycling.
In a Tour preview that Eurosport did about Bernard Hinault and the thirty years since his victory, Greg Lemond told how Tapie signed him.
In the hall of a hotel, a skinny woman in leather approached the American talent to tell him that Monsieur Tapie wanted to speak with him and once at the table, the magnate wrote him an offer that tripled his salary “au chez Renault.”
Obviously he said yes.
The plan went through two phases
First season, 1985, Lemond had to submit to the service of the badger and so he did.
Second season, 1986, the Frenchman had to return the favor to the Californian.
It seemed that Hinault would be serious in his promise, but the road marked another logic.
At one point in the report, Jeff Bernard, a member of that team, explains how in an intermediate sprint he threw Hinault and he told him to continue, not to stop.
“We didn’t give a shit what Lemond thought, they told us to move on and that’s what we did” commented Bernard.
In the end, it is already known that the madness that invaded Hinault, attacking relentlessly in the Pyrenees, and that took its toll on him immediately in Superbagneres where Lemond ended up winning between the paranoia of sabotage and the pressure of a public eager for his sixth Tour de Hinault.
The result of that memorable race was that there was no further talk of anyone else who was not a descendant of Tapie.
La Vie Claire took first, second and fourth with Lemond, Hinault and Hampsten
Urs Zimmermann, the cyclist who had a phobia of flying, was third and they literally played with him.
At the same time, Tapie fell under the weight of justice with his shenanigans, but he will always be able to say that a Tour was literally his and his checkbook.
Image: Eurosport
2023-09-16 22:02:41
#ticket #cycling #imposed #long #Jumbo
