We’re in the midst of the third consecutive year where the men’s monument classics are being decided by one single method - a solo victory. The best riders in the bunch at the moment - Tadej Pogačar, Mathieu van der Poel and Remco Evenepoel - all seem to be capable of launching attacks from great distances, anywhere between 40km and 100km, and they’re able to make these attacks stick.
The exception is Milan-Sanremo. Beautiful, wonderful, perfect Milan-Sanremo which remains a finely-balanced puzzle requiring a scalpel, rather than a 70km solo smash sledgehammer.
Every edition of the Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, Liege-Bastogne-Liege and the Tour of Lombardy since 2022 has been won solo. Throw in a few Strade Bianches and even Mads Pedersen got in on the act recently at Gent-Wevelgem with an attack from 56km out, and these mammoth lonely escapades have become utterly normal. A sprint from a small group is now the exception.
These solo displays of power are amazing physical achievements which require riders to be nothing less than at the peak of their physical power. The efforts also require control. The riders have to measure their effort so they don’t blow up and crack spectacularly.
Well, actually, they don’t have to measure their effort. They have a little device to do that for them - a power meter.
They have a screen telling them exactly how many watts they’re producing. They already know from training (as do most of us now thanks to Zwift and the likes) how many watts they can conceivably sustain for a certain period of time.
Do we not want to make racing more exciting? Do the UCI not want to make the racing more exciting? Should all of us not be worried that these endless solo breakaways, with all the caveats about greatness and difficulty, not eventually make people switch off because actually, it’s just not as interesting or exciting as a tactical battle?
Wasn’t it better when riders bonked unexpectedly, cracked spectacularly and the end result was not a foregone conclusion as soon as one of these riders had a gap of more than 30 seconds? Shouldn’t riders have to know their own bodies? Shouldn’t they have to actually measure their own effort themselves?
Every now and again someone likes me starts bitching and moaning about riders being too beholden to numbers and banning power meters gets suggested. Well here we go a again.
Just ban power meters.
“But it won’t make a difference. The riders know their own bodies so well anyway it doesn’t matter if they can see their watts or not”
Well let them fucking prove it then.
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