In this week’s AIRmail newsletter, The Outer Line takes an in-depth look at trending cycling news: UAE continues dominance, questionable new safety guidelines, Stadiobike announces plans for new racing series, African team to race at MCC and Hincapie unveils new team ……
# Catch up on pro cycling – and its context within the broader world of sports – with AIRmail … Analysis, Insight and Reflections from The Outer Line. You can subscribe to AIRmail here, and check out The Outer Line’s extensive library of articles on the governance and economics of cycling here. #
Key Takeaways:
- UAE Continues Its Run of Dominance
- A Raft of New – and Questionable – UCI Safety Guidelines
- Stadiobike: A New Approach to Pro Racing
- African Women’s Team to Join Maryland Classic
- Hincapie Announces New Team
João Almeida stormed to overall victory
The final test for the upcoming Tour de France was the Tour de Suisse, which ended over the weekend with UAE Team Emirates confirming their utter dominance as the world’s best team. João Almeida stormed to overall victory and – unfortunately for UAE’s competitors – will immediately turn around to act as a domestique for Tadej Pogačar at the upcoming Tour. As we have discussed many times lately, the sight of a Tour domestique winning a prestigious WorldTour stage race is somewhat concerning in terms of the balance of power at the top level of the sport. However, it was also notable that the second two steps on the podium consisted of Kévin Vauquelin, a rider on the low-budget, and lowest-ranked WorldTour team Arkea, and Oscar Onley of Team Picnic PostNL, a budget-conscious team locked in a fierce relegation battle. Their success here once again highlights the fact that even as the biggest teams gather up the vast majority of the sport’s young stars, there is still a vast ocean of talent that smaller teams can identify and use to score major results against teams with staggeringly high budgets – but only if they can successfully develop innovative scouting and rider development programs.
Too narrow?
Safety was pushed back into pro cycling’s spotlight last week with various policy and technical changes – and a good dose of outright cynicism. The UCI issued new guidelines through its in-house SafeR committee that seek to reduce risks of high speed accidents through equipment standards – minimums and maximums for bicycle handlebars, wheels, top gear ratio, and frame configuration. (An additional edict on time trial helmets for road races is on the way.) Two of the bicycle design changes are mundane and will annoy innovative designers but delight consumers with one less confusing frame spacing standard. A shallower rim depth limit was a decision of “natural selection,” as riders were already gravitating towards this due to crosswind risks. In contrast, the handlebar width rule change has been universally derided, with industry pundits and bike fit experts noting that the peloton’s tallest male and smallest woman pro rider would be restricted to 40 centimeters – despite the fact that research shows about 70% of women riders require handlebars narrower than 38cm. There was one bright spot when Velon recently demonstrated how its live data system is being used to improve rider safety; however, this is independent of SafeR, and limited to Velon’s participating teams.
Clip-on aero “Spinaci” handlebar extensions
The barrage of changes and unnecessary arguments around bike design, rider fit, and aerodynamics clouds an important overall context of the new safety rules. The sport has been here before – at the end of the 1997 season – suggesting that the sport might be starting its next rough ride. Back then, the UCI banned the factor it deemed responsible for the rapidly increasing average speed of the peloton and a rash of high speed crashes from 1993 to 1997: clip-on aero “Spinaci” handlebar extensions. While the additional aero position did create some risks, few riders used it in the often technical run-ins to sprint finishes; fewer still used it in the middle of the peloton, where it served no purpose in a draft. Then, what we learned a year later in the 1998 Festina Affair drug bust – and in the subsequent years of turmoil and tribunals – is that EPO was being widely abused by the peloton and that it was primarily the blood-booster which had dramatically increased the overall racing speed. It didn’t help that the UCI’s then-most prominent medical advisor had allegedly been instrumental in introducing EPO and blood doping into elite endurance sports. Banning a handlebar position in 1997 was a cynical and largely irrelevant response to the real problem the sport silently knew it had, but which had yet to be dramatically exposed.
Improved aerodynamics and training protocols today for the role EPO played in the past
High racing speeds and safety concerns are once again concerns in 2025, and optimists could simply compare improved aerodynamics and training protocols today for the role EPO played in the past. But that would be disingenuous given what is happening across sport; the proposed 54×11 top gear restriction is a marginal relief if the riders can artificially pedal faster. The launch of the Enhanced Games therefore bears direct examination to our safety problems today: its two investment seed rounds have likely exceeded half a billion dollars – funding to stage the events and drive a consumer “telehealth” supplement and medication business that could yield up to $100 billion in annual revenues. WADA’s total 2025 budget is just $57.5 million by comparison, and nothing highlights the disadvantages faced by anti-doping more than this: at a cursory glance, this suggests that PED innovation currently outspends PED detection by 1000:1 when factored for the pharmaceuticals and supplements markets. We are not saying that doping is the root of the problem in today’s peloton or accusing specific individuals of cheating, but historically in pro cycling – and according to the prominent Sportschau team’s latest bombshell doping exposé – that is a repeatedly documented outcome. It is therefore important to point out that the outsized “safety” discourse over handlebars and gearing deemphasizes and distracts from the role PEDs and banned preparation methods may currently play.
Alexander Vinokourov and Alexander Kolobnev in the 2010 Liège–Bastogne–Liège
The UCI also appears to be taking a stronger stand on rival riders colluding in-race, a topic on which it has generally been silent in all but the most extreme cases (like Alexander Vinokourov and Alexander Kolobnev at the 2010 edition of Liège–Bastogne–Liège). Most Giro d’Italia fans noticed the strange circumstances in stage 20: Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale’s Driest de Bondt was dropped from Simon Yates’ winning breakaway on the Colle delle Finestre but then “gifted” Richard Carapaz a pull as the EF Education–EasyPost rider furiously chased. This type of inter-team help isn’t unusual in professional cycling and would typically be ignored; however, during an ill-considered post-race interview, De Bondt mentioned that he helped Carapaz at the urging of an EF director, who had told the out-of-contract De Bondt before the stage that such an action could help him potentially secure an offer the next season. The UCI Ethics Commission promptly opened an investigation into the situation. While tactical quid pro quo competitive action is relatively commonplace, an outward admission of it is not, and it leaves the UCI in an awkward position: to potentially punish a rider for a traditionally acceptable “professional foul” – or turn a very public blind eye to the equivalent of open match-fixing. A veritable Pandora’s Box of similar previous violations could potentially open if De Bondt is reprimanded, including Geraint Thomas’s popular lead-out of Mark Cavendish on the final stage of the 2023 Giro d’Italia, when the two were on different teams.
Geraint Thomas’s lead-out of Mark Cavendish
StadioBike – a new cycling discipline and event series which will take place at iconic motorsports racetracks across America – has announced the addition of two influential leaders to its ownership and management team: motorsports marketing executive and retired professional cyclist Kristin Labonte, and global cycling event organizer James Pope. Both will lend their industry expertise to help launch a new fan-centric stadium-style event intended to blend the action and strategic DNA of both bicycle racing and motorsports. StadioBike events will be contested on banked oval motorsport tracks and require teams to complete a series of relay-style rider substitutions, adding new drama and different strategies that will play out in motorsports-style pit areas right in front of the fans.
StadioBike – New racing format
A unique feature of the new racing format will be the opportunity for local cycling heroes to compete against pro racers, loosely modelled upon Indiana University’s iconic Little 500 race. “We’re building a highly entertaining can’t-look-away kind of racing event where all the action happens right before your eyes and brings fans to their feet,” said Courtney Bishop, CEO of StadioBike and three-time winning coach of Indiana University’s iconic Little 500 bike race. Labonte and Pope bring considerable firepower to the venture; Labonte is a former pro road rider who was a multi-discipline Masters National Champion and who is currently Managing Partner of Breaking Limits, a premier strategic sports marketing agency. Pope has over two decades of experience creating and scaling marquee cycling events, including work with the UCI Track Champions League, GCN Events, Revolution Series, and the award-winning Nocturne Series. An inaugural Stadiobike race will be run in 2026 with a nation-wide schedule to commence in 2027, finishing in a series championship.
New team for Hincapie
Former pro racer George Hincapie announced that – along with his brother Rich – he is starting a new men’s professional cycling team that will compete in UCI road races in 2026. While “Modern Adventure Pro Cycling” does not appear to have any athletes signed yet, cycling commentator Daniel Benson reported that the team is already in discussion with a number of both development and veteran riders. This will likely be the first men’s team racing in Europe with a majority of American riders since the Human Powered Health line up in 2022. Sponsors on the team website include Modern Adventure Travel, Factor Bikes, Ekoi, SRAM and The Move – the podcast which Hincapie often co-hosts with Lance Armstrong. The team states that it hopes to “energize American cycling…and prove that performance, purpose and fun can coexist.” The management team thus far is composed of veteran American bike racers like Alex Howes, Tyler Magner and Joey Rosskopf, each with directeur sportif titles. The team’s “all-American” motif will be an intriguing angle as the build-out progresses.
The Maryland Classic making history
The Maryland Cycling Classic announced that the Benin National women’s team will take part in the event this September, making history as the first time an African federation will field a female squad for a major UCI-sanctioned American race. The Benin National Cycling Federation has been rising in prominence under the direction and stewardship of Kimberly Coats, the American CEO of Team Africa Rising, originally founded by her husband Jock Boyer – the first American to race in the Tour de France, in 1981. The team will use the Maryland Cycling Classic as a key preparatory race for the 2025 UCI World Championship for road cycling, which is still planned for Rwanda in late September. “The participation of the Benin Women’s National Team holds a lot of significance on and off the bike,” said Steve Brunner, the race’s Executive Director (and occasional TOL contributor). “As the talent pool continues to grow on the African continent … it’s great to provide a platform for these women to perform and be recognized.”
The Maryland Classic
# Catch up on pro cycling – and its context within the broader world of sports – with AIRmail … Analysis, Insight and Reflections from The Outer Line. You can subscribe to AIRmail here, and check out The Outer Line’s extensive library of articles on the governance and economics of cycling here. #
The post UAE Dominance, UCI Safety Guidelines, Stadiobike New Racing Series, African Team at MCC & Hincapie New Team appeared first on PezCycling News.
