What We Obtain Too Cheaply We Esteem Too Lightly
Kasia Newiadoma conquers her demons; Discourses on the presence of That Dog In Him; and a Liège-Bastogne-Liège preview
No cyclist in the world is done a greater injustice by their win rate than Kasia Niewiadoma. Heading into La Flèche Wallonne, on Wednesday, she was four years and 51 weeks removed from her last professional road race win. Last year, she won the polka dot jersey at the Tour de France—having briefly led the GC on the queen stage—as well as the gravel world championship.
But on the World Tour? In team colors? Against her biggest rivals, Niewiadoma has come up short again and again. Because you think of a five-year win drought and that conjures up images of a no-hoper, someone who doesn’t even come close to winning. Not Niewiadoma. She’s in it constantly.
This past offseason, she was the top-ranked woman and no. 5 overall on my list of 41 riders to watch, specifically because she was always on the podium but never on the top step. I’ll quote from that post here:
Here’s what Niewiadoma has done at the biggest races of her career:
Tour de France: Two third-place finishes, zero wins.
Giro Donne: Six top-10 finishes, zero wins.
Strade Bianche: Eight top-10 finishes, four straight podium finishes, zero wins.
Tour of Flanders: Six top-10 finishes, zero wins.
Amstel Gold Race: Four top-five finishes, one win.
La Flèche Wallonne: Six top-10 finishes, four-top five finishes, two podium finishes, zero wins.
Liège–Bastogne–Liège: Four top-10 finishes, zero wins.
That Amstel Gold win, in 2019, was the last one of her career. Until Wednesday morning.
This Flèche Wallonne was unusual. A race that’s normally decided in a grueling mass sprint up the steepest hill in Wallonia instead rode more like Paris-Roubaix with bumps the size of buildings instead of basketballs. An altered parcours forced those adjustments, yes, but the conditions were horrendous: weather in the 40s, driving wind and, for much of the early afternoon, torrential rain. Over in the men’s race, only 44 riders finished, and Mattias Skjelmose had to be carried off the road after suffering actual hypothermia.
It’s baffling that Niewiadoma had never won this race before now, because a short, sharp ascent would seem to suit her perfectly. But every year, it seems, something happens. Sometimes she gets impatient and attacks too early.
Other times she falls afoul of the essential truth of La Flèche Wallonne: It doesn’t matter how you ride the race if, when you stomp on the pedals to make your move on the Mur de Huy, the power isn’t there. I spent the last 30 kilometers of the men’s race assuming that Richard Carapaz was going to smoke everyone on the Mur, but he couldn’t muster the juice for the decisive attack, and when Stevie Williams came storming up the hill, nobody else could follow.
Sometimes the power just wasn’t there for Niewiadoma, or she had less of it than one of the implacable series of Dutch riders—Annemiek van Vleuten, Anna van der Breggen, Demi Vollering—who had so often relegated her to lesser finishing positions.
This time, Canyon-SRAM provided Niewiadoma with the support to go toe-to-toe with Vollering; in the leadup to the final climb, it was Elise Chabbey who was animating the race and Vollering who had to spend energy to close the gaps.
When they got to the Mur, Vollering set a hard tempo, keen to ride what remained of the peloton off her wheel; Niewiadoma stayed on her shoulder and, for once in her career after repeated overaggressive attacks, she held her fire.
It was inside the 200 meters-to-go marker that Niewiadoma accelerated, and this time, she was the one with the power. Elisa Longo Borghini spun up her legs but couldn’t keep up in a smaller gear; Vollering, exhausted after dragging her competitors up the Mur, couldn’t even get out of the saddle.
Niewiadoma said after the race that after what happened over the weekend, she didn’t want to risk celebrating even a moment early. But on this brutal hill, in these abominable conditions, where she’d come up short so many times before, she finally has her signature win.
It’s interesting to me how popular Niewiadoma has become, and how excited the cycling community got over this win.
There are reasons why Niewiadoma has such an avid following.1 She’s spent so much of her career as the counterbalance to the dominant riders in a sport that lends itself to repeat victors, and she’s done it without a ton of help from her team. Also the thing that’s arguably kept her from achieving more success—her aggressiveness—lends itself to entertaining races. When Niewiadoma attacks, she very rarely stays away to the end, but she forces everyone else to do something more interesting than pedal together to the line.
But the perpetual runner-up becoming such a popular figure is a bit alien to me, coming from a background in American men’s sports. I admit that for the past decade, my mental health has been held hostage by the Philadelphia 76ers, those recidivist postseason choke artists.2 I’ve seen the way James Harden gets talked about, or Auston Matthews, or Clayton Kershaw—all Hall of Fame-level performers whose legacies will be defined to some extent or other by their inability to win The Big One.
This so often takes a moralistic turn, as if postseason sports are not a zero-sum game in which it’s possible to do everything right and still lose, but rather a test of spiritual forthrightness. God will anoint a victor and condemn those who have insufficient quantities of That Dog In Him, so seems the dominant mode of thinking.
I suspect this way of thinking has something to do with those two adjectives I mentioned a couple grafs ago: “American” and “men’s.” These are, culturally, demographic signifiers that connote an extreme belief in the power of individual effort to overcome any structural or external obstacle. They mark a zealous faith in the Will to Power, and a profound lack of empathy for those who don’t Want It Bad Enough.
More than that, I think cycling is averse to that line of thinking for two non-identitarian reasons. First, there is no such thing as The Big One, except maybe the Tour de France, and even then, there’s always another grand tour in a couple months. There are so many opportunities to win that it takes a special talent—like Niewiadoma or Wout van Aert—to create expectations that aren’t immediately met.
Second, this sport is so much simpler and more deterministic than basketball or baseball. So much of it just comes down to sheer physical force, so insofar as there’s a moral component to a perpetual winner or loser, it comes when someone wins too frequently, or too easily, and is accused of cheating in order to do so. Cycling fans love a runner-up. Again, I’ll quote from my capsule on Niewiadoma in my offseason preview:
One thing I’ve learned from cycling is that I don’t find winners to be that interesting. They get a trophy, they don’t need a dramatic literary treatment on top of it. I’d rather examine and write about the serial runner-up. What makes them keep coming back for a lower spot on the podium? What prevents them from climbing up to that top step?
Watching the finale of La Flèche Wallonne, and its aftermath, you could tell just how much effort Niewiadoma had put in, just so she could keep watching Vollering’s back wheel as it slid off into the distance like Wilson in the last hour of Cast Away.
Conversely, it was blindingly obvious to everyone watching what it meant for Niewiadoma to finally get one over on her rivals. Finally, a victory that was tangible rather than merely moral.
I think we all understand that.
Life is about failure and disappointment, and to see perseverance rewarded—literally at the top of a hill, in case you like your metaphors in the bluntest form possible—stirs the spirit. Do you tear up at the thought of hard-won victory, or are you made of stone?
That’s why this race, from not the most famous rider in the sport, in an event arguably overshadowed by the men’s race that had just finished, and also by Liège–Bastogne–Liège this coming weekend, has generated such hyperbolic headlines. We all needed this more than we knew.