Congratulations must go out to Cadel Evans for winning the World Road Race Championship with an uncharacteristically aggressive attack on the final lap in Mendrisio last Sunday. He crossed the finish line solo and claimed the gold medal for Australia. The importance of having a strong team was evident with the Australians. They placed Michael Rogers in the major break of the day who sat on and didn’t contribute, then eventually it was the Aussies themselves who pulled back the dangerous 29-rider break of the day with Stuart O’ Grady, Adam Hansen and Matthew Hayman all doing their fair share of work at the front of the chasing pack. This set up Evans to make his move towards the end of the race. The smaller nations (including Ireland) just wouldn’t have been able to exercise such control over a race like this. It wasn’t to be for the Irish riders who all fell by the wayside before the final selection was made. Roche, who it seems had perhaps over-trained in the run up to the race, was dropped after only 100 kilometres or so and abandoned not long after. Martin managed to stay with the main favourites until about 2 laps to go, and Deignan fared slightly better only getting dropped when Cancellara decided enough was enough and put the hammer down on the final lap.

Cadel Evans on the top step of the podium with Australia's first ever gold medal in the World Championship Road Race

The victory for Evans makes him only the third non-European to take home the title of World Road Race Champion after Greg Lemond and Lance Armstrong. Recently, I pondered what is the best preparation for a rider attempting to win the Worlds and I came to the conclusion that abandoning the Vuelta in the final week is the best tactic. Well Evans has certainly bucked the trend and proved me wrong in that respect and in fact, he becomes only the second man ever, along with Abraham Olano in 1995, to finish on the podium of the Vuelta and win the World Championships in the same year.

However, the most important trend which Evans has now dis-affirmed, is winning with an all out attack. He has silenced the critics that have labelled him as a wheel sucker for most of his career. Evans must be commended for his race winning attack, and he is widely receiving the plaudits for doing so. As such , I find it ridiculous that Evans has been lambasted for following wheels his entire career, and yet at the recent Vuelta, Alejandro Valverde was being lauded for his maturity for doing exactly the same. Valverde didn’t even win a stage of the Vuelta. He finally achieved top spot at a Grand Tour which had eluded him thus far in his career, by not succumbing to his gung-ho tendencies, riding conservatively and following his rivals. This seems to me a perfectly cromulent approach to winning a major stage race and I don’t understand why Evans has been condemnded for doing it and yet Valverde’s performance was hailed as ‘consistent’ and ‘mature’.

So what now for Evans? Will wearing the rainbow jersey of World Champion finally instill within him the confidence to take that final step to the top of a Grand Tour podium? Or will he succumb to the much discussed curse of the rainbow jersey? I’ve often wondered whether this ‘curse’ is a myth or whether it is based on fact. There’s no doubt there have been some appalling cases of the curse in the past. Luc Leblanc was ravaged by injury in 1995 while in the rainbow jersey, barely winning a race. The same fate befell Stephen Roche after his golden year of 1987, barely even starting a race. Perhaps most spectacularly of all was the case of Rudy Dhaenens who won the Worlds in 1990 and never won another race before retiring in 1992.

But this particluar series of unfortunate events occurred many years ago, what about the more recent World Champions? Has the curse of the rainbow jersey continued? To find out, I’ve consulted the immensely informative website, Cycling Quotient, which provides rider rankings depending on their results throughout the season. The site describes itself as the non-official successor of the UCI ranking system which disappeared with the introduction of the Pro Tour in 2005. So I’ve compiled the CQ Rankings of the World Champions of the last 8 years to see how they all performed the years preceding and succeeding their rainbow jersey winning years:

CQ Rankings of the last 8 World Champions. Most of them have a significantly worse year in the Rainbow Jersey than the preceding year in which they won it.

As can be seen, with the exception of Oscar Freire who slightly improved in 2002 and a sensational performance by Tom Boonen in 2006, riders generally take a fairly sharp turn for the worse whilst wearing the rainbow jersey. Clearly, there is a lot of pressure heaped on the shoulders of the current World Champion, and with the added media scrutiny and P.R. commitments that come with the jersey, perhaps the World Champion could be forgiven for a slight lack of focus. It remains to be seen how Evans will handle this added pressure, as he has been known to get a bit frosty with the press in the past. My hope is that Evans can buck yet another trend and put in a stellar performance next year. For a man who lady luck has not smiled at fondly, now’s his time to shine. I’m not sure what his race plans are for what remains of the season, but if he takes to the start line of the Tour of Lombardy, the final monument classic of the year, I certainly won’t be betting against him to immediately break the curse of the rainbow jersey.

The World Road Race Championships takes place this Sunday in Mendrisio, Switzerland. As Stephen Roche said in a recent interview, this is the first time in a long long time that Ireland will have a good team with strength and depth. That there is strength within the Irish team, I don’t think there’s any doubt. But depth? I’m not so sure. Ireland will have 3 riders take to the start line at 9:30 Irish time on Sunday, Nicolas Roche, Philip Deignan and Daniel Martin. Having only three riders will be a major handicap when compared to the big cycling nations like Italy, Spain and Belgium who will all have 9 riders per team.

Philip Deignan and Nicolas Roche will be two thirds of Ireland's team for the World Road Race Championship this sunday.

Who will be the Irish team leader is not entirely clear, although on current form it seems that Philip Deignan with his 9th overall and stage win at the recent Vuelta has the edge over his two team mates. Roche rode the Tour of Britain as preparation and despite getting into one break of note, remained fairly anonymous. Martin, like Deignan, completed the Vuelta. He finished the Vuelta some way off Deignan in 53rd place, although he spent most of the race at the service of Garmin team mate Tom Danielson. All three Irish riders have performed well throughout the year and it’s likely that who ever is feeling freshest come Sunday morning will get the nod to take the reins as leader for the day.

The importance of having as many team mates as possible cannot be underestimated. The 9 man squads will be able to easily delegate the tasks of getting into a breakaway, chasing down breakaways and fetching food and water from the team car. Ireland will have no such luxury. The lads will have to rely on the stronger nations to close up gaps and keep control of the race as three men simply isn’t enough to boss the race. The Irish riders will have to bide their time and hopefully, when the moment is right, one of them will slip into the break that sticks and make it in to the final selection and from there perhaps push for a podium spot. Not an easy task.

In the past 40 years of the World Championships only three times has a rider who wasn’t from the traditionally strong nations of Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, USA or Holland won the road race. One of those occasions was in 1998 when Oscar Camenzind won gold for Switzerland. But back then, qualification criteria was different and the Swiss actually had 12 riders in the race. Another occasion when a lesser nation won the road race was in 2000. Latvian Romans Vainsteins led a three man team and was the only one of the three to finish. The third occasion when one of cycling’s big nations didn’t take home the gold was in 1987 when Stephen Roche stormed home in Villach as part of a four man team along with Seán Kelly, Martin Earley and Paul Kimmage. It is evident that it is very difficult to win a World Championships with a small team.

Nicolas Roche will be dreaming of emulating his father, 1987 World Champion Stephen Roche.

Even though the three Irish riders taking part all had excellent years the World Road Race is a completely different challenge to anything that has come before in their careers. In previous World Championships, Deignan has started twice and Roche attempted his first last year, but neither has ever finished. The race on Sunday will be 19 laps of a 13.8km circuit around Mendrisio, making 262.2km in total. Of the three, only Roche has previously ridden and finished a race of this distance or longer when he took 35th in the 298km Milan San Remo earlier this year.

The best finishing kick on the team belongs to Roche, who took 2nd on a stage of the Tour de France this year. Although, as Deignan said after his stage win in the Vuelta, after a long hard day in bad weather it can sometimes be the case that finishing kicks mean nothing and it can simply come down to the rider who has the most strength left. For those of you will watch the race on Sunday, Ireland will be the only team wearing green jerseys. But just in case it rains heavily (showers are forecasted) and the riders decide to don the rain gear, if the camera gets close enough to view the numbers attached to their bikes, Deignan, Martin and Roche will be wearing numbers 193, 194 and 195 respectively. For an Irish cyclist to make the podium it will take an immense effort by all three riders. However, for me anyway, simply having three good riders representing Ireland at this level for the first time in almost 20 years is more than enough.

Cycling is a strange sport in that there are no entrance fees to view the professionals do battle. Spectators need not part with their money to view the mountain goats soaring through the Alps and need not reach for their wallets to see the fast men battling it out in a mad dash for the finish line. There are no season ticket sales, corporate suites or director’s box and there are certainly no prawn sandwiches.

No, cycling teams are funded by commercial companies willing to fork out the money required to run a professional outfit. In return, these companies get the privilege of having their corporate logos branded on every one of the riders’ team kit. The idea being that revenue will be generated from the advertising that this provides for the company. Sponsors want exposure, and they want success, because ultimately success leads to more exposure.

Francisco Mancebo winning Stage 1 of the Tour of California. But what team does he ride for?

With this in mind, memories were aroused of something I witnessed at the Tour of California back in February. It was a horrible day in around Santa Rosa, the rain was coming down hard and the wind ensured the riders were being pelted relentlessly all day. Accordingly, the riders covered up with the necessary rain gear to get through the stage. However, cover up is most certainly what they did, because the corporate logos adorning their jerseys were no longer visible under their rain gear. There was no obvious indication of which team any of the riders were representing. Even the current race leader Fabian Cancellara had covered up his race leader’s yellow jersey with a black rain coat. Surely, with the millions of euro in sponsorship being poured into teams, they could organise team issue rain gear with the sponsors logos as prominent as they are on a regular kit. Not to mention how difficult all the black and grey clad riders make it for the race commentators.

Sponsors are paying for exposure and one of the major measures of exposure is the success of the team. A point which must have been lost on Rock Racing’s Francisco Mancebo who crossed the line in the rain as winner of Stage 1 of the Tour of California wearing a completely anonymous grey rain jacket. Sponsors love stage wins, the money shot is when one of their riders crosses the line, arms aloft displaying their company’s logo. Surely a rain jacket which looked identical to a team jersey would have served the advertising requirements of Rock Racing a lot better than a blank raincoat.

Despite there being no charge to spectators to watch the sport of cycling, teams do generate some revenue from merchandise sales. This includes jerseys, shorts, bib shorts, mits, socks and caps. While there are plenty of leisure cyclists who buy the pro team gear, there are countless others who view it as a sacrilege.

The Team CSC gear from 2007 that I wear.

Recalling a conversation I read a few months back on boards.ie, one poster said that no amateur deserves to wear the pro team gear because the riders who are on the pro teams have worked hard and have made it as a professional cyclist and deserve to wear it. By not actually acheiving anything worthwhile on a bike, amateurs that ride around in the pro gear are insulting the pro riders who actually deserve to wear it. Another poster then replied that it’s no big deal, that sure don’t you see hundreds of amateur footballers up in the 5-a-side in Tallaght running around in Man United and Liverpool jerseys? The original poster pounced and explained that in football, a jersey is just a jersey, but in cycling a jersey is seen as a symbol of stature. The jerseys are the prizes bestowed upon the riders, the green jersey, the yellow jersey, the rainbow jersey, jerseys in cycling are sacred. He went on to comment that wearing pro team gear on a bike is not the same as wearing pro team gear on a football pitch. It is more akin to turning up for a football match with an FA Cup winners medal around your neck and the World Cup in your hand.

Personally, I do wear the pro team gear and depending on your definition of the term, would be described as a ‘Fred’. I can usually be seen cycling around in the 2007 Team CSC gear and here’s why.

Am I not, by buying official team merchandise, directly supporting the sport that I love? Am I not, however small, financially supporting a professional cycling team? Am I not, by parading around in my pro team gear, providing the team sponsors with even more advertising? Does seeing amateur riders in pro team gear not encourage potential sponsors to get involved in cycling?

I would rather parade around in my undeserving CSC gear supporting the sport of cycling than give my money to Mr.Lidl. However, with the winter months looming, I could do with some nice team issue rain gear!