On Neutralization and Neutrality

The UCI and I disagree on who disgraced themselves at Stage 11 of the Vuelta

Photo Credit: Antonio Baixauli, Unipublic

Back in January, I made three announcements about the future of this newsletter. First, that I’d be changing from two posts a week to one. Second, that I’d be reducing the subscription price from $5 a month to something commensurate with a 50 percent reduction in output. Third, that I’d be moving off Substack.

Eight months later, only one of those things has happened. You’ll notice that after the paywall went down, I never bothered to put it back up. When I started this newsletter, I had hoped to turn it into a viable side hustle and vowed to give it a year’s worth of effort before making any further decisions. When that time came, I decided that staying the course or throttling up made less sense than throttling back and changing the tone of Wheelysports from semi-professional to unabashedly amateur. To write for myself, in other words.

In addition to reducing the actual amount of work product I have to conjure up, deciding to go the amateur route has eliminated the pressure I felt to advertise and cross-promote and do all that extraneous shit every writer hates doing but puts on a good face about because the alternative is getting your soul squished by some VC baron. I think this has been more fun in Year 2 as a result.

I’ve also felt less time pressure to move, because, to be honest, the CMS and distribution system here work, and they’re already set up, and changing anything is a pain in the ass. And while I have plenty of friends who run paid newsletters through places like Ghost or Beehiv, and are happy with the change, those services cost money. And while I like doing this newsletter enough to do it for free, I don’t like doing it enough to do at the cost of losing hundreds of dollars per year. I hope you’ll find that to be a reasonable stance.

After Year 2, I’m still not sure what I want to do here. I gave serious consideration to dealing with the Substack issue by simply folding up shop after the world championships at the end of the month. I’m still not sure how long I want to do this, or if I want to try to go back to some kind of freemium model. To be honest, I have zero concept of how much appetite there’d be, or even if anyone would miss this newsletter if I stopped writing it.

But I’m not ready to make any lasting decisions now. And until I do, I’m finally migrating the newsletter off Substack. I’ll keep the archive up here just so I don’t have to deal with a million broken links, but as of two weeks from now I’m moving to Kit.

Why two weeks from now? Well, that’s the next edition of the newsletter that’s set to come out after I finish all the setup I need and build out my post templates.¹ The CMS is much less polished than this one, and I still have to iron out a lot of the kinks and do some design grunt work. Little stuff like making sure the shade of purple on the subscribe button matches the purple on the Wheelysports logo, which I tried to eyeball and missed on badly. Anyway, the September 17/18/19ish edition of this newsletter will be the next one that comes out when I have time to do all that housekeeping up front and tech support on the back end.

I’m hoping there will be little of the latter. I know I just dropped a link to the new site, but as of now, I can still export my email list and plug it into Kit. With any luck, that’ll go seamlessly, but I’ve learned not to bet too heavily on luck.

As always, I welcome your feedback and beg for your indulgence.

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The big news of the day has little to do with the racing itself, but I do want to touch on that because it was interesting.

Since the last edition of this newsletter, Torstein Træen has ceded the red jersey back to Jonas Vingegaard, who I believe now has it for good. Træen’s reign in red was similar to, though far less grandiose than, the seven days his countryman Odd Christian Eiking spent in red in 2021. That’s Odd Christian Eiking, not to be confused with King Harold Bluetooth, who was an odd Christian Viking.²

Eiking held on to his red jersey through Stage 16, then surrendered it on a stage that featured two Category-1 climbs before the final climb, a summit finish at the outside-category Lagos de Covadonga (12.5 kilometers at 7.0%). Eiking lost 9 minutes and 35 seconds to stage winner and new race leader Primož Roglič, and, like, I feel ya bud. That is a hard climb against some real ass-kickers. Still, Eiking held on to finish the race 11th on GC and parlayed that into a two-year stint at EF, which is not a bad souvenir for his 15 minutes of fame.

I think I’ve written enough about Eiking to justify the Harold Bluetooth joke, so I’ll move on to UAE’s fascinating team tactics. Nominally, this team has thrown all its GC chips behind João Almeida. I’m not a huge believer in Almeida as a grand tour GC guy, but he’s ridden a terrific race to this point, and currently trails only Jonas Vingegaard in the overall standings

Practically, UAE’s tactics, or strategy might be the better way to put it, have been more complex. Because in addition to supporting Almeida, they’re also hunting stages. UAE won three in a row between the team time trial on Stage 5, Jay Vine’s win from the break on Stage 6, and Juan Ayuso’s breakaway win on Stage 7.³

On Stage 10, Vine won from the break again, while Ayuso put in an all-out domestique effort to pull Almeida up the final climb and try⁴ to gap Vingegaard. And on Stage 11—admittedly, a hilly stage rather than a proper mountain stage—when Almeida and Vingegaard were in the group of favorites heading into the final climb, Vingegaard had Matteo Jorgenson, Victor Campanaerts⁵ and one or two other teammates on board, but Almeida was alone.

I don’t really know how much that would’ve mattered, because when Almeida attacked, he was brought back, and when Tom Pidcock countered, Vingegaard was on his wheel in a heartbeat, while Almeida got dropped.

Given what I’ve seen over the past week or so, I’d draw the conclusion that UAE is out to win as many stages as it can, get Vine to Madrid in the polka dot jersey, and put Almeida into second place on GC. If something changes and Vingegaard shows signs of weakness, great, we can adjust.

But the fundamental problem facing UAE is they do not have a single GC rider who can hang with Vingegaard, and if their team is at all stronger than Visma-Lease a Bike’s,⁶ it isn’t by enough to gang up on Vingegaard and wear him down. Almeida is still within 50 seconds, and he still has a shot to land a blow in the Stage 18 individual time trial. But the last time he put time into Vingegaard in a mass start event was Stage 5 of Paris-Nice, which was 18 racedays ago. Recognizing that fact and acting accordingly isn’t heroic and swashbuckling on UAE’s part, but it’ll probably lead to better results overall.

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One major threat to Almeida’s second place on GC is Tom Pidcock, who’s climbing like a spider through the first half of the Vuelta. When Vingegaard won Stage 9, Pidcock finished second with Almeida in his wheel. He finished with the favorites on Stage 10, and on Stage 11 he took advantage of the punchy terrain to drop everyone but Vingegaard on the final climb.

Vingegaard, I feel obligated to mention, played this perfectly. There was some chatter about Pidcock dropping him briefly with a counterattack late in the climb; I guess that’s literally true. But to me, it looked like Pidcock dipped into the red zone⁷ for a moment in a last-ditch attempt to go solo. If Vingegaard had well and truly been on the limit, it would’ve won Pidcock the stage. Instead, it got him a few meters’ worth of breathing room, but Vingegaard merely kept riding at his own pace and was soon back alongside Pidcock.

From there, he went right on the front and started pulling. For you game theory aficionados, there is no simpler Nash equilibrium to find in sports.

How Isaac del Toro and UAE Team Emirates Lost the Giro d'Italia

Pidcock is riding for a small team that needs a big result; a stage win at the Vuelta would qualify. It would also be a big deal for Pidcock personally; he’s won a single Tour de France stage, but has no other accolades at the grand tours. Pidcock is close to Vingegaard on GC,⁸ but he’s nowhere near as big a threat as Almeida, due to the latter’s superior time trialing ability, stronger team, and better stage racing credentials.

For Vingegaard, a stage win would be nice, but he already has two this year and two more from 2023. He’s here for the red jersey or bust. And every second he gains through cooperation with Pidcock is a second he can put into Almeida, his only real threat in this race. From the moment these two put daylight into the rest of the GC group, the optimal strategy was clear: Cooperate as long as possible to put time into the other GC contenders. And if they came to the line together, Pidcock would probably win the sprint anyway. Everyone goes home happy.

It never got that far, as the commissaires neutralized the race and stopped the clock, for GC purposes, with three kilometers to go.

This stage was supposed to end with a sprint through downtown Bilbao. In fact, the riders went through the finish line once before, with about 38 kilometers to go, and it seemed like everyone up against the barriers was holding a Palestinian flag.

Protesters had already stopped Israel Premier-Tech on the road during the Stage 5 team time trial. They’ve protested at the IPT team bus throughout the week. They invaded the road on Tuesday, and twice again on Wednesday even without counting the finale.

One the first trip through the finishing circuit, they dropped leaflets onto the road but otherwise did nothing other than wave their flags. But as Pidcock and Vingegaard were descending into Bilbao a second time, the organizers called the race off.

I’m not sure anyone in the crowd actually did anything untoward or disruptive. The TV coverage I saw showed about a billion cops in flak jackets in the road, along with a few photographers, but no protesters.

Is it possible that the police overreacted to a crowd expressing support for the Palestinian people, who are currently being exterminated by a hostile occupying force? I don’t know, I’m an American, I don’t think that kind of thing happens over here.

Gaza is not complicated, but talking about it has become so. There’s been a concerted effort in American political discourse, stretching back at least as far as I can remember, to elide the distinction between all Jewish people and the state of Israel, and to paint all Arabs, if not all Muslims, as inherently violent, dangerous, and intolerant.

The genocide in Gaza is the kind of historical tragedy that compels people to protest and speak out, especially at events like the Vuelta, which take place in front of the world’s news media. Not only is the bombing of schools and hospitals, and the starvation of children, a crime against humanity that demands attention, Israel can only do this because of the full-throated support of Western governments, including many so-called liberal democracies like the United States and the United Kingdom. Without European and especially American money, weapons, and diplomatic cover, this would not be happening.

There would, I hope, be demonstrations about this regardless of which teams showed up for a bike race, but the specific subject of these protests is the participation of Israel-Premier Tech.

The party line, which Bob Roll parroted on Peacock this morning, is that IPT is neither owned nor sponsored by the Israeli government and is therefore free of sin, and protests against it are illegitimate. To call this argument a fig leaf makes actual fig leaves look like boxer shorts.

Taking One for the Team

Last week, I offered a hypothetical situation in which a team called Serbia, owned by a billionaire with ties to the Milosevic regime, showed up to race the 1995 Tour de France. This afternoon, Patrick Redford of Defector put paid to the separation-of-bike-and-genocide farce more directly. You should read the whole thing (and subscribe to Defector whether you read the article or not), but I’ll quote it briefly here.

Israel–Premier Tech is owned by Canadian-Israeli billionaire Sylvan Adams, an avid cyclist and dedicated Zionist whose life's work is the fusion of his two passions. Adams, a close friend of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, spent some $23 million to bring the start of the 2018 Giro d'Italia to Israel (he also paid big money to get Madonna to perform at Eurovision 2019 in Tel Aviv). He attended Donald Trump's inauguration, has been referred to as "Israel's unofficial ambassador" by organizations he runs, and spent June agitating for Trump to attack Iran, days before Trump attacked Iran.

There are three conclusions I’ll draw about the neutralization of Stage 11.

First, I’m a little upset we didn’t get to see Pidcock and Vingegaard duel for the stage win, or see if they could push their advantage over the Almeida group to the line. This stage was mapped out exquisitely by the organizers and executed to perfection by the riders. That we didn’t get to see its conclusion is a shame.

Second, I have questions about the size of the police response and the forethought⁹ by the organizers, who had all day to consider that there might be protests but only acted at the last minute. And describing the finale of this stage as a mass sprint finish is just not accurate; the leaders were coming in a few at a time, and nobody back in the peloton would’ve had anything to sprint for.

Nevertheless, neutralizing the stage was the right decision. It doesn’t take much—one protester in the road, one carelessly-placed flagpole, one mishandled sign—to take down a cyclist at full sprint. Were the organizers too cautious? Maybe. But given the downside of Pidcock or Vingegaard being brought down, I can’t fault them for being so.

Third, and most important: I’d give up this entire race, all three weeks of it, to increase international pressure on the Netanyahu government by one percent. Far from disgusting or being worthy of (in the UCI’s words) strong condemnation, they are righteous and worthwhile.

[T]he UCI reaffirms its commitment to the political neutrality, independence, and autonomy of sport, in accordance with the founding principles of the Olympic Movement.

The UCI would also like to reiterate that sport, and cycling in particular, has a role to play in bringing people together and overcoming barriers between them, and should under no circumstances be used as a tool for punishment.

The UCI expresses its solidarity and support for the teams and their staff as well as the riders, who should be able to practice their profession and pursue their passion in optimal conditions of safety and serenity.

So reads the press release from the sport’s governing body.

What a crock of shit. Some say that neutrality is complicity; that might or might not be true depending on the issue. But neutrality here is cowardice, and in the UCI’s case, using the principle of neutrality as a shield is hypocritical.

It’s not politically neutral to allow sportswashing—whether it’s Israel-Premier Tech, UAE Team Emirates, Bahrain Victorious, XDS Astana, or Jayco Alula—in the title sponsors of a quarter of the World Tour peloton. It’s not politically neutral to hold UCI-sanctioned stage races—or even the world championships—in authoritarian states.

The neutrality of the “Olympic movement,” if it was ever worth a damn, is now just an excuse to look the other way when a country with deep pockets wants to promote itself. Imagine something better

Imagine that, instead of settling for serenity, global sports organizations advocated for justice and human rights. Imagine what could be accomplished if, instead of defending a bit of advertisement for a government that guns down civilians, organizations like the UCI (or FIFA or the IOC) held their member countries to certain standards.

Even as an American, I pray for a world in which those governing bodies had the conviction to take the World Cup or the Olympics away from countries that disappear their own residents and use the military to terrorize their own cities. That would probably do some good.

Instead, we’ve settled for small-minded leaders like these, who equivocate over advertising for mass murderers. They don’t know what serenity means.

1. I’m still not certain I can do footnotes over there, which would absolutely crush me.

2. I had this joke teed up all day before I wrote last week’s newsletter, then forgot to actually include it. I got so mad I almost rewrote the post and sent it again.

3. Which came one day after Ayuso packed it in and soft-pedaled to the finish, losing more than six minutes to Vingegaard and dropping from second on GC to 43rd.

4. Unsuccessfully, to no one’s particular surprise

5. Who’d dropped back from the break

6. Which I don’t have a strong opinion on

7. “burned another match,” in the jargon of the sport

8. 56 seconds back

9. Or lack of same