David Stanley is an experienced cycling writer. His work has appeared in Velo, Velo-news.com, Road, Peloton, and the late, lamented Bicycle Guide (my favorite all-time cycling magazine). Here's his Facebook page. He is also a highly regarded voice artist with many audiobooks to his credit, including McGann Publishing's The Story of the Tour de France and Cycling Heroes.
David L. Stanley
David L. Stanley's masterful telling of his bout with skin cancer Melanoma: It Started with a Freckle is available in print, Kindle eBook and audiobook versions, just click on the Amazon link on the right.
The premise of the post:
Polymoath David Stanley and his son Aaron have sent their individual takes on the 2024 season. Neither knew what the other wrote. Aaron's is posted below David's on this page.
David L. Stanley writes:
Pogi! Meet Pogacar!
He’s the modern cycling Cannibal.
From the … town Komenda,
He’ll go down in cycling history!
(Sung to the tune of the Flintstones theme song, of course.)
Consider this (to quote REM instead of the Flintstones): if Tadej Pogacar had raced this season as a one-man team, his UCI points total would've dropped him between Israel-Premier Tech and EF Education-EasyPost as the 12th-best crew in the world. Now, that’s absurd, eh? And quite the slight to his UAE Team Emirates Legion of Doom. Those guys were just that damned good; they always put Pogi into a place where he could blow up the peloton like Grand Moff Tarkin blew up Alderaan.
Tadej Pogacar and his UAE Team Emirates after the Giro D'Italia. Sirotti photo
We heard lots of chatter this year on the internet about how boring the race was when Pogi was present. I was always on edge: Are the top teams going to combine against him, firing off attack after attack in a clear war of collusion? When would he go? Could anyone go with him? Would the chasers have the motors and cohesion to close it down? Some of you found his fireworks a bore. Of course, you’re all wrong. And of course, feel free to get your own column to put that out there but again, consider this:
It was 1968. I was a baseball crazy 10 year old. Bob Gibson of the Cards established himself as the meanest, toughest pitcher in MLB history with an ERA of 1.12, 13 shut-outs, and a record of 22-9. Here in Detroit, I was in awe of Denny McLain and his 31-win season. Pitchers so dominated in ’68 that MLB lowered the mound to help out the hitters. Yet, ask any fan of the STL and/or the DTW and we will tell you, ad nauseum, how we loved to watch those guys crush it over the season.
Bob Gibson
One year later, 1969, Rod Laver won his second tennis Grand Slam. Didn’t hear a lot of bitching about that, either. At the toughest tournaments in the world, playing best of 5 sets on grass and clay, The Rocket went 28-0 and we all thought he was a goddamned hero.
Come to think of it some more, the 1972 Miami Dolphins of the NFL went 17-0 for the season. The only people who whined about it were the Washington fans, since they were taken down in Super Bowl VII as Miami completed the only undefeated season in NFL history.
Or the year 1985-86: “That damned Wayne Gretzky! Who the hell does he think he is scoring 215 points, those 52 goals and crap, those 163 assists, and he’s only 24! I can’t stand to watch hockey anymore! So boring!”
Come to think of it, one last time, the years 2000-2001 were big in golf, too. Mammoth, in fact. Even non-golfers were swept up as Tiger Woods won consecutively the US Open, the British Open, the PGA, and in 2001, the Masters. Even the national news led their shows with updates on tourney days. He’s the only golfer in the modern era to win the four majors in a row; the phrase “The Tiger Slam” is now a part of golf lexicon.
Tiger Woods.
Did art fans complain about Picasso? “His stuff is so good. He ruined art for everybody else?” Did music fans complain about Mozart? “That punk-ass Austrian kid, he’s making everyone else sound bad.”
You want to complain about multi-generational excellence (hereinafter called MGE or MGT, for Multi-Generational Talent), take it somewhere else. I’m not your kind and caring sensitive ear.
This season was maximum MGE.
Consider this: Pogi won 25 races this season. He had 58 race days. That’s a 43% winning percentage. Astonishing. I am a sports fan, and most of my fandom is focused on individual sports. Not many athletes can state that they win nearly half of their competitive days.
Early in the season, Pogacar wins Strade Bianche. Sirotti photo
That’s one of the advantages of modern pay scales. Riders no longer have to race 130 races in a season to pay the bills. Just as HWSNBN was able, in the early 2000s, to target the Tour thanks to his Nike/Oakley millions, today’s top tier pros can focus all their energy on just a few of the most worthy races. When you combine extreme focus with MGT, you get guys racing less, hitting greater heights (Overture! Curtain, Lights! This is it, we’ll hit the heights, and oh, what heights we’ll hit – Look, I know you were singing it, so I put it in there for you) and winning more. I like it. I like it a lot.
Will this happen again next season? I don’t know. Yet, this I do know: Jonas Vingegaard went on record today, 10/25/24, and stated that he is done with his off-season vacation. His official preparations for the 2025 race season have begun.
Jonas Vingegaard wins O Gran Camino stage 2 on February 23.
This we all know: when JV is healthy, he is the only man who can challenge Pogi in the Grand Tours. They are so close in GT talent, Pogi and Jonas. The 26-year-old Slovenian and the 27-year-old Dane will go down in cycling history as the main combatants in our sport’s greatest rivalry. And yes, I do consider Merckx v. Ocana, Bartali v. Coppi when I say that. Just consider that Pogacar and Vingegaard have won the last five editions of the Tour de France between them. How close are they in Tour de France talent? Look at this, which I boosted from CyclingUptoDate.com. That’s close.
Accumulated Tour de France GC times over the last four years.
Pogi started his season with an 81km solo attack at Strade Bianche in March. In the season’s middle, he took the Giro d'Italia, Tour de France, and the World Road Championship. He closed his season with that marvelous 48 km solo at Il Lombardia.
In all, Pogi spent 390km alone and off the front as he rode to his 25 wins. There was 51km alone at the Worlds, 38km at the Giro dell'Emilia, 34 km each as he won stage 20 of the Giro d'Italia and the monumental Liège-Bastogne-Liège. At the Volta a Catalunya, it was 29km to take stage 6. At the GP Montréal - a 23km solo. Makes you wonder: 1) Would Remco have won the Olympic TT medal if Pogi had targeted it, and 2) is there an Hour Record attempt in Pogi’s future?
Pogi ended the season with 11,655 points. That’s about 4K more points than he earned when winning the points total in 2023. The guy in second, Remco? He had a great year, too, with double Olympic golds, and finished with 6,072 points. Again, a remarkable distinction; nearly twice the points for Pogi as for Remco.
Pogacar wraps up the season at Il Lombardia. Sirotti photo
To round out the top 5, Jasper Philipsen showed there is always room near the top for a sprinter; he was 3rd with 4,790. Ben O’Connor had the best year of his career in 4th with 4,096 points, courtesy of 2nd place podiums at La Vuelta and the World’s. In 5th, the ever-stalwart Paris-Roubaix and Tour of Flanders winner Mathieu van der Poel earned 4,053 points.
Pogi has spent over three years, 171 weeks, at the top of the UCI table. In second place for most weeks is Primož Roglič with 75 weeks as the leader, and the redoubtable Peter Sagan with 69 weeks.
Primož Roglič after winning the 2024 Vuelta a España. Sirotti photo
I used the term MGT a few times up there. What exactly do I mean? For genealogical purposes, a generation is approximately 30 years, according to my very shallow dive into the dark worlds of Ancestry.com. In sports, it’s a whole different thing. In the NFL, a player’s average career is 3.3 years, says the NFLPA. That’s the same average lifespan of chameleons and the ruby throated hummingbird. In the NBA, it’s 4.8 years, about the same as a scorpion. In the Premier League, which is difficult to suss out because the PFA is not nearly as sturdy as either US players’ union, the average career appears to be around 6 years.
In pro cycling, no hard data exists. A scholarly article that used participations in the Tour de Flanders as the means to calculate career length was the best I could find, and it was barely tenable. Let’s just say the average pro cyclist career is also 4.8 years. Average, mind you, includes hangers-on like Chris Froome, and the hundreds of racers since 1990, just to name a start point, who turned pro and lasted one season on a lower tier team. That’s a generation in our sport- five years. Froome was clearly a generational talent. Ditto LeMond, due to his health issues, because a healthy Greg would surely have been a MGT.
1990 Tour de France stage 11: Gianni Bugno (right) just beats Greg LeMond.
The list of MGT stars is the roll call of the all-time greats. (For discussion, I only looked at the post-WWII men.) Coppi. Bobet. Anquetil. Merckx. Hinault. Multi-generational – the influence and power of these riders was substantial and lasted for generations before and after their peak dominance of the sport. Each of these men had a year, perhaps several years, that was the equal of Pogi’s 2024 annus mirabilis.
What I am driving at here is that each one of these greats greatest year is the greatest year of all time. You cannot compare across generations. Not in cycling. Not in Nordic ski racing. Not in tennis. Nor Golf. Not in any sport.
Everything changes. Picture the European roads immediately after WWII. Or the lousy tires. Or the gas pipe frames, the floppy leather-soled shoes with nailed-on cleats, saggy woolen shorts with a sandpaper-thin actual chamois as the pad. Every 5-7 years, new cycling tech produces an explosive increase in performance. Pierre Lallement was granted US Patent No. 59,915 in 1866 for a ‘serpentine frame with pedals attached to the wheels’ and for the last 158 years, we’ve seen the progression happen, regular as a clock can tick.
Jacques Anquetil (left) and Raymond Poulidor in the 1964 Tour de France stage 20: Racing up Puy de Dôme.
Pogi’s 2024 season was near-perfect. Eddy’s 1972 season was near-perfect. Anquetil’s 1964 season was near-perfect. Consider this: When these season long fireballs explode in the sky, ooh and aah like a 6-year-old kid on the Fourth of July. We don’t get to see the pinnacle of human performance all that often. Once every couple generations, if we’re lucky. Enjoy the hell out of it.
Just don’t lose your religion over it. Thanks.
Aaron wrote:
A champion, resplendent in rainbows, racing through the fields of Belgium and the cobbled paths of France. A newcomer from the wrong continent with skin the wrong color, adorned in green, raising his arms in triumph. A camera panning to reveal the Eiffel Tower standing tall behind a young star ecstatically fulfilling his childhood dreams. And a lone soul wearing white - now pink - now yellow - now his own set of rainbows - striking out on his own a hundred kilometers from the finish. These will be the indelible images of the 2024 cycling season. And while a picture may be worth a thousand words, it is only fair to give these warriors of the road their due.
In front of the Eiffel Tower, the Olypmic road race podium, from left: Valentin Madouas (Silver), Remco Evenepoel (Gold) & Christophe Laporte (Bronze). Sirotti photo
Mathieu van der Poel has spent the past six-plus seasons establishing himself as one of the most impressive cross-discipline cyclists the sport has seen. Whether it’s cyclocross, mountain biking, road racing, or even gravel, the so-called Flying Dutchman simply knows how to win the biggest single-day races any form of cycling may throw his way. He came into 2024 fresh off his first road world championships victory, earning himself the coveted rainbow bands for the entire season, and started the season by winning his sixth cyclo-cross world championships title, then followed it up with wins at the E3 Saxo Classic, the Tour of Flanders, and a second consecutive win at Paris-Roubaix.
2024 Paris-Roubaix winner Mathieu van der Poel leads a group over the cobbles. Sirotti photo
It was once again a masterclass performance from the greatest single-day racer of this generation, and while he would cool off through the rest of the season – at least by his lofty standards – MvdP’s leadouts for teammate Jasper Philipsen at the Tour de France enabled several runaway stage wins, and he’d add his first gravel world championship at the end of the year, just in case anyone questioned his ability to win riding any type of bike on any type of surface. Two monuments, two world championships, third at the road world championships on a parcours that was not suited to him; just another year in the life of Mathieu van der Poel.
Road cycling has long been a sport dominated by a very specific few demographics. If you aren’t, generally speaking, American, European, Australian, or from a scant few South American countries punching far above their weight class, you simply do not have the opportunities at the top level of the sport. Biniam Girmay, though, is out to change all that. In 2022 the Eritrean became the first black African rider to win a stage at a grand tour by winning that year’s stage 10, but it would be at the Tour de France in 2024 where he would explode onto the stage and make his presence in the collective consciousness known.
Biniam Girmay wins 2024 Tour de France stage 3. ASO photo
With his victory in stage 3, Girmay became the first ever black African rider to win a stage at the Tour, and by slipping on the green jersey after stage 5 he became the first such rider to wear any leader’s jersey in the sport’s biggest race. In the slim chance that anyone thought this was a fluke, he won two more stages and held the green jersey all the way to Nice. The ripples through the world were palpable: scenes in his hometown of Asmara were jubilant as the residents celebrated Girmay’s remarkable victories, and it is hardly possible to imagine how his success will affect the course of cycling, not just in Eritrea, but across Africa, a continent with what can be best described as a burgeoning cycling scene. Will the breakthrough of a grand champion to celebrate unleash a wave of new professional cyclists from Africa? Only time will tell, but sometimes all it takes is one win, one celebrity, one role model for young athletes to look up to and say “he looks like me; I can do that too!” to change the course of history.
To borrow a term from George R.R. Martin, Remco Evenepoel has been cycling’s version of the Prince That Was Promised since his junior days. Seen as the next big thing to come in the sport since winning multiple U23 world titles, it was always a matter of when, not if, Evenepoel would make his mark on the professional scene. Still just 24 years old, he has more than met the expectations of a world always looking for the next great champion. 2024, though, would be a story of overcoming adversity for the young Belgian; following a horrifying crash at the Tour of the Basque Country in April that saw him suffer a broken collarbone and scapula, the season became an uphill battle and a test of both mental and physical fortitude.
Remco Evenepoel on his way to winning the 2024 Tour stage 7 time trial. Sirotti photo
He returned to racing at a little-known event called the Tour de France, and expectations were, of course, minimal – all he needed to do was win a time trial or two, compete with some guys called Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar for the general classification, and hang onto the white jersey for a few weeks. Light work, really. And yet he did it all with aplomb. He won the stage 7 ITT, he was the last man dropped by Vingegaard and Pogacar on many of the toughest mountain stages, and he won the white jersey by nearly 16 minutes. Despite this, his best riding of the year was yet to come.
We all know the story of the Olympics: he became the first rider to ever win the gold medal in both the road race and the time trial in the same Olympics, he made it look easy, and he posed for one of the most iconic images of the entire event, an instant classic photograph in front of the Eiffel Tower. Winning the time trial at the World Championships on a golden bike constructed to commemorate his Olympic success – well, that was a foregone conclusion; a cherry on top of a remarkable season.
Remco Evenepoel riding the Olympic time trial. Sirotti photo
Evenepoel makes it clear that cycling is in very safe hands for years to come, and his incredible performance from July onward almost made one forget what he’d endured early in the year. At 24 years old, to recover from the injuries he suffered and go on to establish himself as one of the greatest riders in the world? It would be enough to make for the greatest storyline of the season, if not for, well…
The word “inevitable” is one that can be applied to a very select few athletes throughout the course of history. They are the Tom Bradys of the world, the Rafael Nadal at Roland Garros types of performance, Tiger Woods in his most dominant years. In 2024, we were greeted with a new form of inevitability, this time taking the form of a Slovenian with hair tufts poking through his helmet riding away from a peloton that, despite being made up of the greatest cyclists in the world, could practically be seen sighing, putting their collective hands up in the air as if to say “guess we’re riding for second place now”.
Simply put, Pogacar did not like the fact that he actually lost a few races in 2022 and 2023, and he was out for blood this season. The results of that pursuit are out there for all to see, and even briefly summarizing the best of them is a career palmares for all but the greatest riders in the history of the sport. Strade Bianche. Liege-Bastogne-Liege. Volta a Catalunya with four stages. The Giro d’Italia with six stages and the mountains classification. The Tour de France with another six stages. As if enough history hadn’t already been tucked away in his back pocket for one year, the road World Championships, becoming the first rider to ever win two Grand Tours and Worlds in the same season.
He's gone. Tadej Pogacar on a winning 34.5-kilometer solo break at Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Sirotti photo
Il Lombardia, just in case there was any debate left about whether this was the greatest season of all time, for a second monument to go along with the two Grand Tours and Worlds. Pogacar spent the year riding as if to ensure no journalist could ever come up with enough adjectives to describe his season, and he may well have succeeded. Historic? Astonishing? Mind-boggling? Nothing quite seems to encompass everything that he achieved properly. How can you provide context for someone doing things that no one has ever done before and making it look easy? In short, Tadej Pogacar rewrote history, set standards that may never again be touched – unless, perhaps, he does it himself, because who’s to doubt such a thing after what we witnessed in 2024? – and inserted himself at the very top of the very short list of riders who can be discussed as “greatest of all time”. It’s a trite and extremely overused phrase, but cycling is genuinely Pog’s world and we’re fortunate just to be living in it; we should be so lucky as to be spectators of such indescribable levels of greatness for years to come.
Tadej Pogacar wins the stage 21 time trial and the 2024 Tour de France. Sirotti photo
If the years 2019 through 2023 were ushering in a new era of cycling, with new champions establishing themselves, new levels of performance being reached, new juggernaut teams of the sport becoming entrenched at the highest level, 2024 was a coronation. Tadej Pogacar overcame the blemishes of the previous year to ascend to godhood. Remco Evenepoel set unthinkable performances at a ludicrously young age. Mathieu van der Poel continued to show his dominance in the classics. Biniam Girmay went from a solid sprinter to a green jersey and multi-stage winner. And these are but selected snapshots of a year gone by in which the storylines twisted and turned relentlessly, wending their way through a remarkable season in which Primoz Roglic winning the Vuelta a Espana (with Ben O’Connor riding to a resilient second place) felt like nearly a footnote in the wake of so many outstanding performances across the cycling world.
Primoz Roglic finishing 2024 Vuelta a España stage 21 in the GC leader's red jersey. Sirotti photo
It is a tribute to the greatness of riders such as Pogacar and Evenepoel that even Grand Tour victories can be lost in the wake of their accomplishments; you can never take that red jersey away from Roglic, capping off a relentlessly challenging season for one of the unluckiest riders in the peloton, but who’s to compare to two gold medals and a world championship? It is, thus, safe to say simply: 2024 was a cycling season of epic proportions in which the titans of the sport rose to the top time and time again, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible on a bicycle and setting higher and higher standards for what can be achieved in the years to come.
David Stanley, like nearly all of us, has spent his life working and playing outdoors. He got a case of Melanoma as a result. Here's his telling of his beating that disease. And when you go out, please put on sunscreen.