Bicycle Racing News and Opinion,
Tuesday, June 25, 2019
Back to news and opinion index page for links to archived stories | Commentary | Our YouTube page
2018 Tour de France | 2018 Giro d'Italia
Since when do we have to agree with people to defend them from injustice? - Lillian Hellman
Upcoming racing:
- June 26: Halle Ingoolgem
- July 6 - 28: Tour de France
Latest completed racing:
- June 15 - 23: Tour de Suisse
- June 19 - 23: ZLM Toer
- June 20 - 23: La Route d'Occitanie
- June 9 - 16: Critérium du Dauphiné
- June 12 - 16: Baloise Belgium Tour
- June 13: GP Kanton Aargau
- June 5 - 9: Tour de Luxembourg
- June 9: G.P. di Lugano
- May 11 - June 2: Giro d'Italia
- May 28 - June 2: Tour of Norway
- June 2: Rund um Köln
- May 24 - 26: Tour de l'Ain
UCI rider, team & country rankings after Tour of Switzerland
Here is the World Ranking of the top 40 riders:
Julian Alaphippe (shown at the Dauphiné) is Number 1.
| Rank | Rider | Team | Points |
| 1 | ALAPHILIPPE Julian | DECEUNINCK-QUICK STEP | 3720.95 |
| 2 | ROGLIČ Primož | TEAM JUMBO-VISMA | 3536.28 |
| 3 | FUGLSANG Jakob | ASTANA PRO TEAM | 3116 |
| 4 | VALVERDE Alejandro | MOVISTAR TEAM | 2859 |
| 5 | PINOT Thibaut | GROUPAMA-FDJ | 2751 |
| 6 | VAN AVERMAET Greg | CCC TEAM | 2657.33 |
| 7 | ACKERMANN Pascal | BORA-HANSGROHE | 2405 |
| 8 | KRISTOFF Alexander | UAE TEAM EMIRATES | 2392.5 |
| 9 | MATTHEWS Michael | TEAM SUNWEB | 2328.29 |
| 10 | NAESEN Oliver | AG2R LA MONDIALE | 2284 |
| 11 | DUMOULIN Tom | TEAM SUNWEB | 2242.86 |
| 12 | VAN DER POEL Mathieu | CORENDON-CIRCUS | 2175 |
| 13 | YATES Simon Philip | MITCHELTON-SCOTT | 2145 |
| 14 | VIVIANI Elia | DECEUNINCK-QUICK STEP | 2124 |
| 15 | WELLENS Tim | LOTTO SOUDAL | 2089.18 |
| 16 | THOMAS Geraint | TEAM INEOS | 2027.25 |
| 17 | LOPEZ MORENO Miguel Angel | ASTANA PRO TEAM | 2010 |
| 18 | SAGAN Peter | BORA-HANSGROHE | 1937 |
| 19 | SCHACHMANN Maximilian | BORA-HANSGROHE | 1905.47 |
| 20 | BARDET Romain | AG2R LA MONDIALE | 1878 |
| 21 | KWIATKOWSKI Michal | TEAM INEOS | 1859.08 |
| 22 | NIBALI Vincenzo | BAHRAIN-MERIDA | 1734.86 |
| 23 | BERNAL GOMEZ Egan Arley | TEAM INEOS | 1676.75 |
| 24 | LUTSENKO Alexey | ASTANA PRO TEAM | 1654 |
| 25 | YATES Adam | MITCHELTON-SCOTT | 1653.45 |
| 26 | MOLLEMA Bauke | TREK-SEGAFREDO | 1639 |
| 27 | CARAPAZ Richard | MOVISTAR TEAM | 1628 |
| 28 | DEGENKOLB John | TREK-SEGAFREDO | 1587 |
| 29 | KRUIJSWIJK Steven | TEAM JUMBO-VISMA | 1559 |
| 30 | ŠTYBAR Zdeněk | DECEUNINCK-QUICK STEP | 1534 |
| 31 | IZAGUIRRE INSAUSTI Ion | ASTANA PRO TEAM | 1528 |
| 32 | WOODS Michael | EF EDUCATION FIRST | 1509 |
| 33 | BUCHMANN Emanuel | BORA-HANSGROHE | 1463 |
| 34 | TEUNS Dylan | BAHRAIN-MERIDA | 1444 |
| 35 | DENNIS Rohan | BAHRAIN-MERIDA | 1437.86 |
| 36 | VAN AERT Wout | TEAM JUMBO-VISMA | 1423 |
| 37 | QUINTANA Nairo | MOVISTAR TEAM | 1412 |
| 38 | ULISSI Diego | UAE TEAM EMIRATES | 1404 |
| 39 | POGAČAR Tadej | UAE TEAM EMIRATES | 1392 |
| 40 | GROENEWEGEN Dylan | TEAM JUMBO-VISMA | 1379.54 |
Team rankings:
| Rank | Team | Points |
| 1 | DECEUNINCK - QUICK - STEP (DQT) | 14453.07 |
| 2 | BORA - HANSGROHE (BOH) | 12962.9 |
| 3 | TEAM JUMBO - VISMA (TJV) | 11920.05 |
| 4 | ASTANA PRO TEAM (AST) | 11812 |
| 5 | TEAM INEOS (INS) | 11153.32 |
| 6 | UAE TEAM EMIRATES (UAD) | 10798.79 |
| 7 | MOVISTAR TEAM (MOV) | 9744.34 |
| 8 | BAHRAIN - MERIDA (TBM) | 9346.58 |
| 9 | GROUPAMA - FDJ (GFC) | 8876 |
| 10 | TEAM SUNWEB (SUN) | 8782.51 |
| 11 | MITCHELTON - SCOTT (MTS) | 8680.32 |
| 12 | EF EDUCATION FIRST (EF1) | 7868.49 |
| 13 | TREK - SEGAFREDO (TFS) | 7506 |
| 14 | AG2R LA MONDIALE (ALM) | 7280.66 |
| 15 | LOTTO SOUDAL (LTS) | 6917.87 |
| 16 | CCC TEAM (CCC) | 5463.64 |
| 17 | COFIDIS, SOLUTIONS CREDITS (COF) | 4843 |
| 18 | TEAM KATUSHA ALPECIN (TKA) | 4703.34 |
| 19 | TOTAL DIRECT ENERGIE (TDE) | 4647.45 |
| 20 | WANTY - GOBERT CYCLING TEAM (WGG) | 4531 |
| 21 | TEAM DIMENSION DATA (TDD) | 4468.01 |
| 22 | ISRAEL CYCLING ACADEMY (ICA) | 3959 |
| 23 | CORENDON - CIRCUS (COC) | 3835 |
| 24 | ANDRONI GIOCATTOLI - SIDERMEC (ANS) | 3624 |
| 25 | WALLONIE BRUXELLES (WVA) | 3513 |
| 26 | VITAL CONCEPT - B&B HOTELS (VCB) | 3136 |
| 27 | TEAM ARKEA - SAMSIC (PCB) | 2994 |
| 28 | ROOMPOT - CHARLES (ROC) | 2549 |
| 29 | NERI SOTTOLI SELLE ITALIA KTM (NSK) | 2287.29 |
| 30 | NIPPO - VINI FANTINI - FAIZANE' (NIP) | 2098 |
| 31 | DELKO MARSEILLE PROVENCE (DMP) | 1879 |
| 32 | RIWAL READYNEZ CYCLING TEAM (RIW) | 1857.29 |
| 33 | CAJA RURAL - SEGUROS RGA (CJR) | 1836.53 |
| 34 | GAZPROM - RUSVELO (GAZ) | 1756.15 |
| 35 | SPORT VLAANDEREN - BALOISE (SVB) | 1685 |
| 36 | RALLY UHC CYCLING (RLY) | 1436 |
| 37 | TEAM SAPURA CYCLING (TSC) | 1393 |
| 38 | MINSK CYCLING CLUB (MCC) | 1376 |
| 39 | EUSKADI BASQUE COUNTRY - MURIAS (EUS) | 1355 |
| 40 | TERENGGANU INC. TSG CYCLING TEAM (TSG) | 1275 |
Country rankings:
| Rank | Country | Points |
| 1 | FRANCE | 13309.95 |
| 2 | BELGIUM | 13270.45 |
| 3 | NETHERLANDS | 11879.85 |
| 4 | ITALY | 10683.27 |
| 5 | SPAIN | 10108 |
| 6 | GERMANY | 10031.02 |
| 7 | COLOMBIA | 9128.33 |
| 8 | GREAT BRITAIN | 8427.61 |
| 9 | AUSTRALIA | 8411.15 |
| 10 | SLOVENIA | 8048.41 |
| 11 | DENMARK | 6884.15 |
| 12 | NORWAY | 4722.17 |
| 13 | POLAND | 4607.97 |
| 14 | AUSTRIA | 4296 |
| 15 | SWITZERLAND | 3401.77 |
| 16 | RUSSIAN FEDERATION | 3307.72 |
| 17 | CZECH REPUBLIC | 3244.71 |
| 18 | KAZAKHSTAN | 3163.01 |
| 19 | IRELAND | 3065.52 |
| 20 | PORTUGAL | 2971.17 |
| 21 | CANADA | 2968.71 |
| 22 | UNITED STATES OF AMERICA | 2754.75 |
| 23 | ECUADOR | 2754.64 |
| 24 | SOUTH AFRICA | 2701.05 |
| 25 | LUXEMBOURG | 2405.28 |
| 26 | NEW ZEALAND | 2356.37 |
| 27 | ESTONIA | 2344.71 |
| 28 | SLOVAKIA | 2134.68 |
| 29 | ERITREA | 2073.5 |
| 30 | LATVIA | 1969 |
| 31 | BELARUS | 1332.5 |
| 32 | TURKEY | 1285 |
| 33 | ALGERIA | 1186.65 |
| 34 | UKRAINE | 1051 |
| 35 | JAPAN | 924.51 |
| 36 | ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN | 902.5 |
| 37 | HUNGARY | 800 |
| 38 | COSTA RICA | 736.17 |
| 39 | ROMANIA | 718 |
| 40 | MEXICO | 662 |
CCC Team to race in Belgium at Halle - Ingooigem
The team sent me this:
24 June 2019: CCC Team will be lining up at Halle - Ingooigem on Wednesday (26 June) with a team looking to use the Belgian one-day race as a way to test form heading into the next phase of the 2019 season.
Sports Director Steve Bauer said that all seven CCC Team riders will benefit from racing at Halle - Ingooigem this week.
"This race ideally comes in the week leading up to many of our riders' respective National Championships and the guys racing on home soil will be able to benefit from Halle - Ingooigem being part of their build-up. For those riders on this roster not competing at their National Championships, Halle - Ingooigem provides either a good opportunity to get back into the race rhythm or a nice bridge in their race calendar to keep them sharp. We will look to support all of our riders and, as the race progresses, we will see who is the most motivated to go for a nice result for themselves and the team," Bauer explained.
Will Barta will make his return to racing in Belgium after fracturing his left collarbone at the Amgen Tour of California.
"I am very excited to be back racing again after breaking my collarbone in California. Training has been progressing well, and I’ve been feeling good on the bike so, I am excited to pin on a race number again and see where my fitness and shape is at this point," Barta said.
Halle - Ingooigem (26 June)
Jakob Mareczko (shown at the 2017 Tour of Hainan) will be racing the Halle - Ingooigem for CCC Team
Rider Roster: Will Barta (USA), Paweł Bernas (POL), Jonas Koch (GER), Jakub Mareczko (ITA), Laurens ten Dam (NED), Gijs Van Hoecke (BEL), Francisco Ventoso (ESP)
Sports Director: Steve Bauer (CAN)
Defending champion Victor Campenaerts discusses Belgian time trial championship
Campenaerts' Lotto-Soudal team sent me this:
On Thursday 27 June the Belgian time trial championship will take place in Middelkerke. Defending champion Victor Campenaerts will do everything possible to prolong his title, but there are various contenders who are ready to make it difficult for him to do so. The Hour Record holder previews the race against the clock.
Vicotr Campenaerts after setting a new world hour record.
Victor Campenaerts: “I didn’t recon the course yet, but performance manager Kevin De Weert already did. The stage profile is flat and it’s not very technical. The championship will take place at the seaside in Middelkerke so the wind will play a decisive role. Last year, the profile was more hilly and the road surface was poor. This year, the conditions are better and that will make the race a lot more enjoyable to ride.”
“I’m aware of the fact that I’m the man to beat and that puts pressure on me. If I don’t win the Belgian time trial championship, I will be disappointed. If I win, I would only confirm and it certainly wouldn’t be a surprise. But if you can break the world Hour Record for the eyes of 650,000 Flemish people, I think you can say that I perform well under pressure.”
“Wout van Aert might be my biggest competitor if you look at his performances in the Critérium du Dauphiné. Besides, Evenepoel is also in great shape. But our team also has some riders who are able to beat me in the time trial. Thomas De Gendt set great times in the time trials of the Giro and Tim Wellens won the time trial in the Belgium Tour.”
“I will be at the start of the championship with the ambition to win. If I will be beaten by someone of the team, I will be disappointed, but I prefer being beaten by a teammate than by another rider. I hope the jersey stays in our team, however, I will be disappointed if it wouldn’t be on my shoulders.”
“I have had an intensive schedule the last months. I already rode Tirreno-Adriatico, the Giro d’Italia and recently the Tour of Belgium so I do not have to train that much anymore. Of course I will still be having some hard training days, because I am someone who likes to be fully prepared for the day of truth.”
Participants Lotto Soudal: Victor Campenaerts, Thomas De Gendt, Stan Dewulf, Frederik Frison, Brent Van Moer and Tim Wellens.
Bicycle Retailer & Industry News posted this insightful analysis of the state of the cycle industry:
The spectacular success — and failure — of Bike 3.0, Part One
by Rick Vosper
I created the idea of three “ages” concept for the post-WWII specialty retailer bicycle channel back in January. You can read more about it here, but here’s the CliffsNotes version:
Bike 1.0, roughly 1950 — 1975, when the specialty retail market was dominated by a single brand, Schwinn, creating an era of relative stability at both the supplier and retailer levels.
Bike 2.0, extending from the bike boom and introduction of the mountain bike through the late 1990s/early 2000s. In hindsight, I would more narrowly define the start of this period with Schwinn’s Supreme Court loss in its decade-long antitrust battle and the rise of the current selective distribution model, especially as characterized by the now-ubiquitous Authorized Dealer Agreement. Most importantly, this period was governed by the phenomenon of Perfect Competition, where no particular brand or brands accrued enough share or competitive advantage to gain control of the market.
Bike 3.0, starting near the turn of the current millennium. The present era features a few dominant players in both the supplier and (per geographic location or region) retailer segments of the market. The theory also predicts a declining number of traditional retailers, contraction and consolidation of the supplier segment, and is abetted by the rise of internet commerce, which impacts all segments.
At least that was (and is) the theory. To be sure, a few companies — Trek, Specialized, a few large retail chains, and certainly Shimano — hold premiere positions in their respective markets. But truly dominant? That’s debatable. And while I think the 1.0/2.0/3.0 model is still valid, we now have new information that suggests the 3.0 era has failed to fulfill its premise and that something else may be coming along to augment or replace it altogether.
The 3.0 Premise:
The basic idea behind Bike 3.0 (or at least the first time it occurred to me) goes back to a letter John Burke sent to Trek dealers in late 1997. A friend sent me a copy. In it, as I recall, Burke said he had sent a memo to Trek employees and salespeople saying it was no longer possible to grow the company by simply adding more retailers. To succeed, along with improving operational efficiencies, Trek would have to do more business with its existing retailers, both by offering new and successful products and by working more closely with its dealer base for their mutual success.
A few years later, Specialized took a very similar — and probably more radical — position with what came to be known as the Specialized Dealer Alliance (full disclosure: I was a part of this effort, first as a staff writer, later as the company’s head of marketing). In the years that followed, and with contributions from many other factors, Specialized moved from an estimated fourth-place position among bike brands to its current #2 spot on the podium, increasing its gross sales more than fivefold and eclipsing competitors Giant and Cannondale (which had its own struggles in this period) in the process.
In a very general sense, the Trek and Specialized programs today incorporate all the 3.0 elements. The overall goal was to gain enough market share to command a price premium for the brands’ products and improved revenue for their select group of retailers. This would be accomplished when top brands allied themselves more and more tightly with the top retailers in each market, driving everyone else off a cliff like lemmings hurled from buckets by Disney technicians in some cheesy fake 1950s nature documentary. Everything else in the model — marginalization of competitors at both supplier and retailer levels, waves of consolidation, ongoing polarization of market share turbocharging brand growth — proceeded directly and inexorably from this fundamental realignment of sales channel elements.
The overall goal was to gain enough market share to command a price premium for the brands’ products and improved revenue for their select group of retailers.
Except that, in hindsight, most of it never really happened.
When "dominant" … isn’t.
Remember, the 3.0 model was a direct response to a period of Perfect Competition (more about that here), where, for various reasons, no single player can gain traction to dominate the market. And of course “dominant” can mean a lot of things.
One definition of dominance is that a brand can command a premium for its products versus comparable offerings from competitors, something that by definition can’t happen in a perfectly competitive market. Both Trek and Specialized currently do exactly that (in terms of MSRP and MAP; less so at the cash register). And, according to a dozen or so of their retailers I spoke with, they generally offer higher dealer margins as well … although the same retailers are quick to point out that those margins have shrunk over time, just not as much as competitors’.
In our current reality of cutthroat pricing and razor-thin profits, this is a huge accomplishment, and Trek and Specialized deserve full credit for managing it.
You can read the rest of Mr. Vosper's wisdom here.
Back to news and opinion index page for links to archived stories | Commentary