Teamwork: does it work?

Yes, of course it does, pro cycling is all about teamwork, we already know that. As they say, it's the only sport where an individual wins, but can't win without their team.

Some time ago, I speculated in a post about the difference which the new UCI rules would make to the life of a domestique.  (Ah, "The Life of A Domestique", great title for a book, huh? Probably involving slavery, pot-scrubbing and general down-trodden-ness. But I digress. No surprise for any of you who read this blog regularly.)

You remember, as from this year, Points Mean Pro-Teams, and teams will need to acquire points in order to be eligible for the top rank of cycling.

Previously, domestiques used to be allowed to "have their day" and compete for a stage win, as a reward for their hard work. My thought was that this would no longer be allowed, as teams would need to concentrate all the points in as few riders as possible, as only the top 5 riders' points count towards the team score, and only the top 15 riders' scores count at the end of the year towards Pro-Team status.

So it would be a waste to have 20 riders with 10 points each: it would be much better to have the same 200 points spread over fewer riders.

Now, I thought that this was going to be bad for domestiques purely because they would no longer have their chance of glory, and that they would find this disappointing.

However, it's worse than that: teams are now scrabbling around to buy domestiques with points in order to make up their Pro-Team UCI point deficiencies, so a domestique with 20 points or so is suddenly worth a lot of money - and a domestique with no points is suddenly not worth anything, even though he has worked loyally and thoroughly throughout the season.

This can't be right! The life of a domestique was always a bit of a bugger - that's a technical term - as they quite literally did all the work, but received none of the glory.  All their work was done in the first 100kms of the day, before the TV coverage, so they rarely had the joy of being "seen", and instead were always filmed limping across the finish lane as the podium presentations were taking place.

And now it's even worse than I'd thought: as LLB pointed out when we were discussing this point over dinner the other night - ah, how we live - the teams are going to actively prevent their domestiques from gaining any points, precisely to prevent them from being poached at the end of the season. So not only will they no longer be given their day, they will now be instructed to exhaust themselves, even if it's not strictly necessary, in order to ensure that they don't accidentally pick up any UCI points.

How mean!

AT long last, nearly a year after me starting to say this, the riders themselves are beginning to realise that this is going to be a problem, and I was interested to read one of the departing Shack riders having a rant on this exact subject. Of course, he's miffed at his team merging without warning, but his points are all valid.

The rider in question is Geoffroy Lequatre, and he suggests that next season, "People will ride for themselves instead of for their leaders" which is going to require what he calls a different mentality, which might well change the whole spirit of the sport.

I agree with him that this is entirely possible, and I am adamant that this is not a good thing!

His suggestion is that riders should share in the points awarded to the stage and race winners, in the same way that they share in the prize money.

This could be an excellent way out of the problem: my immediate thought is to say that within each race, the rider who actually wins the stage/sprint/kom etc gets the points and the glory. But afterwards, all the team members receive "ghost points" equalling that of the winner.  These points remain with the individual rider, are added into the UCI rankings, and are carried forward by the individual rider into the next season.

Sprint points and KOM points are different, they should stay just with the rider who won them. I think it is absurd for non-climbers to win KOM points, unless they really are the first person over the top, in which case they damned well deserve it! I also think there should be TT points.

This will have the effect of increasing the total number of points in the rankings, but I can't see that being a problem.

Now, I haven't really sat down with a spreadsheet to work through the details, so I would be very happy to see any suggestions for making this work more smoothly.

Then we can send it off to the UCI, ha ha!