With the lack of road racing in full swing, to satisfy my craving I’ve spent the last few weeks watching repeats of last year’s races. I’ve just finished watching all five of cycling’s monument classics, which are Milan San Remo, Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, Liége-Bastogne-Liége and the Tour of Lombardy. Having watched all five of the winners cross the line in the past few days it struck me how young they all were. Mark Cavendish, Stijn Devolder, Tom Boonen, Andy Schleck and Philippe Gilbert are all still in their twenties. None of the five monument winners this year have reached thirty years old, this is not something that has happened very often in recent years. It happened in 1988 but didn’t happen again until last year, and it happened again this year. So it got me thinking, have the monument winners been getting younger, and if so, why might this be? To illustrate, here’s a table of the winners of the five monuments for the past thirty years and the ages each of them were when they won:

The average age of the monument classic winners for the past thirty years.

The average age of a monument classic winner for the past thirty years is 28.54. Last year’s average age of 26 is the youngest of the past thirty years and a full two and a half years younger than the average winner. Gone seem to be the days of the old classics hard man socking it to the young pretenders. The likes of Andrei Tchmil, Sean Kelly, Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle and Johan Museeuw all won monuments whilst over the age of 35. There are few riders in the current peloton over the age of 35 who are likely to challenge for the win at one of the five biggest one day races on the calendar. The only three names that come to mind are 36 year old George Hincapie who seems destined never to win his beloved Paris-Roubaix, 38-year old Davide Rebellin who has now doped his way into suspension  (and probably retirement) anyway and finally Alessandro Petacchi who could challenge at Milan San Remo next March at the age of 36.

The average age of the competitive cyclist is definitely creeping down. In my opinion there are a couple of reasons for this. First of all, riders are retiring earlier. There aren’t that many riders over the age of 35 capable of challenging for a monument classic because there aren’t that many riders over the age of 35 still riding. In the top 500 riders in the world this year (according to Cycling Quotient) only 34 of them are 35 or over.  The second and more important reason for the success of younger riders, in my opinion, is that directeur sportifs are trusting their younger riders with more responsibility. I argued in a previous post that the peak age for a cyclist is not 29-32 as is widely suggested, but more like 24-28. The reason why cyclists in the latter age bracket fail to win as many races as the older riders is the idea of a pecking order within a team. A young rider is expected to earn his corn, ride at the service of his older team mates for a number of years, chalking up smaller victories when the opportunity allows. Only after a solid number of years as a domestique may a rider be considered expereinced enough and respected enough within his own team to assume the responsibility of team leader.

More and more, directeur sportifs are entrusting young riders with these leadership responsibilities in major races while the older more established riders instead ride as domestiques. Take Columbia HTC as an example, older more experienced riders like George Hincapie, Kim Kirchen and Michael Barry all decided to move on because they were no longer willing to devote themselves to the fortunes of younger riders. Perhaps this shift in team focus towards younger riders, in turn, is causing riders to retire earlier.

Apart from the monument classics, there is an abundance of young stage racing talent who will expect leadership status at their respective teams, Alberto Contador, Andy Schleck, Vincenzo Nibali, Roman Kreuziger, Thomas Lovkvist, Robert Gesink, Luis Leon Sanchez and Tony Martin, none of whom are over 27. Riders who, if they aren’t given a leader’s role, will have no problem finding a team who are willing to build a team around a young stage racing talent.

What must be mentioned also is the abuse of EPO that was endemic in the peloton during the 1990s. The older riders who are still riding in the peloton would have been exposed to the abuse of this performance enhancing substance during this period. Obviously there are still riders willing to cheat but, it would seem, there are far less cheaters these days than there was in the 1990s. Perhaps, having not been exposed to performance boosters so early in their careers, younger riders are having to train harder and longer to achieve results, more than was necessary when the EPO was flowing. Therefore, the current crop of young riders are in fact, better cyclists.

Maybe, maybe not, but there is definitely a shift in focus towards entrusting younger riders with more responsibility. I think we will see more and more teams granting leadership status to its younger riders in the big races.  It could be a long time before we see riders  like  Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle winning Paris-Roubaix  or Joop Zoetemelk winning the World Championships at the ripe old age of 38.

This week Bradley Wiggins has finally completed his move from Garmin-Slipstream to the new British outfit Team Sky. Ever since he finished 4th in the Tour de France last July, this transfer has been rumored, and with a Tour contender shaped hole on the Team Sky roster it seemed like a probable move. I honestly thought that Team Sky had missed the boat and the rider transfer wouldn’t happen until next year. Most teams have already started their winter training camps and all team roster changes are usually finalised before November. Wiggins’ signing has come very late in the day and Team Sky boss Dave Brailsford has finally landed the Tour contender he so dearly wanted. I had suggested in a previous post that Team Sky could not take a Tour place for granted and they could be up against it to secure a wild card invitation to the French Grand Tour next year. With the signing of Wiggins they still can’t take a Tour place as a given, but they now have a much better chance of being extended an invite at the expense of one of the weaker teams.

The transfer itself seemed to be a very drawn out process which was never far from the headlines. Garmin boss Jonathan Vaughters had repeatedly stated that Wiggins had a year left on his Garmin contract and that he expected the rider to honour that contract. Wiggins had been saying the same, sort of. He also said, now infamously, that to win the Champion’s League you need to be playing for a team like Manchester United, but he was currently at a team more like Wigan Athletic. Now Bradley Wiggins has gotten his wish and has moved to what he feels is a stronger team than Garmin and he will now have the chance to chase road success with the same backup team that supported him throughout his success on the track. His goal next year will undoubtedly be to finish on the podium in the Tour de France, but by leaving his Garmin team mates behind has he really put himself in a better position to achieve this goal?

As I see it, the Tour teams of Team Sky and Garmin-Transitions (as they’ll be known next season) will look something like this:

Possible 2010 Tour de France lineups for Bradley Wiggins' new team and former team.

Firstly, looking at the team mates Wiggins has left behind; he would have been able to call on the climbing talents of Ryder Hesjedal, Tom Danielson, Dan Martin and Christian Vande Velde. Hesjedal won a mountainous stage of the Vuelta a Espana this year and will be riding all out as a domestique for Wiggins in return for a protected rider status at the 2010 Vuelta. Danielson will be doing the same having put in a solid performance at this year’s Vuelta, abandoning with an illness on stage 18 whilst in 9th place overall, having previously finished in the top 10 twice in the Spanish Grand Tour. Dan Martin is a young, up and coming pure climber who served effectively as a domestique to Danielson in the Vuelta. Christian Vande Velde has himself finished 4th in the Tour de France (2008) and proved himself to be invaluable to Wiggins’ challenge for a podium spot this year.

In addition to the climbing talent, there’s the time trialling expertise of David Millar and David Zabriskie who can both also be relied upon to do a turn on the lower slopes as the road rises upwards. The two Davids will also be expected to form part of the sprint train for the young American Tyler Farrar who will be harvesting hopes of defeating Mark Cavendish in the bunch sprints. Julian Dean will also be employed as a lead out man for Farrar. The final rider will be Johan van Summeren who is an all rounder who is regarded as one of the best domestiques in the peloton.

Not much will change for Garmin, who started the 2008 and 2009 Tours with the goal of getting Christian Vande Velde on the podium. Wiggins’ new found climbing ability was still in the unknown stage when he took to the start of the Tour de France, the transition of Wiggins to team leader only occurred once the Tour had already started. Getting Vande Velde on the podium will again be Garmin’s goal in 2010, along with stage victories for Farrar.

Now to Wiggins’ new team mates at Team Sky: Kurt Asle Arvesen, Kjell Carlstrom and Juan Antonio Flecha are all experienced Tour riders with fifteen Tour starts between them. But they are riders more suited to the spring classics, and therefore at the Tour, will not be much use as domestiques for Wiggins in the mountains. The two other Brits in the team, Thomas and Froome have only ridden the Tour once each and again are not ideally suited to protecting Wiggins in the high mountains. Edvald Boasson Hagen will be making his Tour debut and will be expected to challenge the likes of Cavendish, Farrar and Hushovd for sprint victories with Flecha, Arvesen and Thomas forming a lead out train.

That leaves Wiggins with Simon Gerrans and Thomas Lovkvist as the two most likely men to be there or thereabouts when he requires protection in the high mountains. However, while Gerrans is a competent climber, the reason he left Cervelo is because he didn’t fit the bill as a domestique for Carlos Sastre and ultimately didn’t make the Tour team. It will be hard now to convince Gerrans to curb his quest for stage wins in favour of riding for Wiggins. Lovkvist, until Wiggins came along, was under the impression that he would be assuming the role of leader of Team Sky at the Tour next year. Perhaps his nose will now be slightly bent out of shape having been bumped down to the role of domestique for Bradley Wiggins.

On paper I feel that Garmin are stronger in all areas than Team Sky. They are a more rounded team with clearer goals in mind for the Tour. Obviously, Dave Brailsford’s goal for the Tour will be to get Wiggins on the podium, but he’ll have a tough time motivating and preparing  the rest of the team for this task. Wiggins may think he’s secured his move from Wigan to Man United, but I can’t help but feel he’s done the opposite.

In this year’s Tour de France twenty teams took part. Seventeen of those teams were part of the Pro Tour. There were in fact eighteen Pro Tour teams this year, but the Tour organisers decided not to include the Fuji-Servetto team, this in no small part due to the doping scandal created by Ricardo Ricco and Leonardo Piepoli at the 2008 Tour under the team’s former guise of Saunier Duval. This left three spots open for the powers that be to invite to the world’s biggest race. Of these three wildcard places, one went to the Cervelo Test Team, the team of returning Tour champion Carlos Sastre, this seemed an obvious choice. The second wild card was awarded to the Dutch team Skil-Shimano seemingly because of their aggressive showing in the Spring races. The third berth, as is the ASO’s wont, was given to a French team, namely Agritubel who were invited for the fourth year in a row.

Next year however the situation will be different. The Fuji-Servetto team (now Footon-Servetto), having been ignored this year, will expect to back on the Tour scene next year. The UCI having set a precedent by excluding the controversial Astana team in 2008 but welcoming them back this year. There are also two new teams, Team Sky and Radio Shack hoping for an invite. Not returning though will be the Pro Tour teams Crédit Agricole and Gerolsteiner, and the perennial wild cards Agritubel who have all folded. This leaves 16 teams who were part of the Pro Tour when the UCI agreed that all of them would be invited to take part in the Tour de France for the next four years. These teams are:

Ag2r La Mondiale
Astana
Bbox Bouygues Telecom
Caisse d’Epargne
Cofidis
Euskaltel-Euskadi
Francaise des Jeux
Columbia HTC
Lampre
Liquigas
Omega-Pharma-Lotto
Quick·Step
Rabobank
Footon-Servetto
Team Saxo Bank
Team Milram

Assuming the number of teams participating in the Tour next year remains at twenty, this now leaves four wild card places to be filled. Even though the amount of wild card places is double that of most years gone by, I don’t share the unflappable confidence that most people have about the participation of Team Sky. The British publications Pro Cycling and Cycle Sport constantly write about Team Sky as if their place in the Tour next year is assured. If they had signed either of the two top British riders Bradley Wiggins or Mark Cavendish, it probably would be, but they didn’t. They are a new team with some decent established riders and some great up and coming talent but do they really deserve a place at the Tour de France?

The other teams hoping for an invite next summer will be Team Radio Shack, BMC Racing, Garmin, Katusha, Skil Shimano, Vacansoleil, Xacobeo-Galicia, Besson-Sojasun and Cervelo. Of these teams, I feel that plenty of them have more reason to be invited to the Tour next year than Team Sky. Below is a table detailing the amount of riders on each team who have previously taken part in the Tour de France, the amount of Grand Départs that these riders between them have been a part of and the amount of Tour stage wins they’ve amassed over the years:

Details of the number of Tour starts made by riders, the number of separate riders who have previously taken part in the Tour, and the number of stage wins amassed by riders for each of the teams hoping to gain a wild card entry to the 2010 Tour de France. Next years rider rosters were used to create the table.

Apart from the previous Tour performances of the teams, the political issues must also be looked at, as the reasons for gaining an invite from the ASO are not always sporting. Obviously Radio Shack will expect an invite with Lance Armstrong part of their setup. Armstrong vs Contador was the story of this year’s Tour and the Tour organisers will be hoping for the same media interest as Round 2 of the battle takes place. Radio Shack also have two riders who’ve stood on the Tour podium, Andreas Kloden and Levi Leipheimer. There is Cervelo who have Carlos Sastre, also a former Tour winner. Cervelo can also boast Thor Hushovd, twice winner of the Tour’s green jersey and one half of the other main story of last year’s Tour, Hushovd vs Cavendish in the points competition.

Then there are the two current Pro Tour squads but who weren’t part of the original sixteen team invite agreement, Garmin and Katusha. Garmin harbour two riders who have finished 4th in the race in Bradley Wiggins and Christian Vande Velde. They also have two former Prologue winners and yellow jersey wearers Davids Millar and Zabriskie. Katusha have former yellow jersey wearer Kim Kirchen, three time green jersey winner Robbie McEwen in what could be his final Tour and they also have double stage winners Filippo Pozzato and Sergei Ivanov. It’s hard not to see these four teams getting invites to the Tour, with the riders they possess and the past Tour experience contained therein and from an Irish point of view it would be ideal if Cervelo and Garmin were present. That would mean that potentially, the top three Irish professionals, Roche, Deignan and Martin could all be on the start line next July.

Not to be forgotten though is the fact that BMC Racing hold a winning hand in the shape of Cadel Evans, current World Champion. The only previous time that the Rainbow Jersey has been purposely shunned from the Tour is in 2003 when the organisers refused to invite the Domina Vacanze team of Mario Cipollini. But, the Lion King had for years gone out of his way to annoy race organisers by wearing outrageous racing gear and had never previously finished a Tour de France. Cadel Evans is a different story. He’s a very professional rider who has twice finished 2nd in the Tour. As such it is very difficult to imagine ASO leaving Evans and therefore BMC out in the cold. They also have former World Champion Alessandro Ballan and former stage winner and yellow jersey wearer George Hincapie. Of the four tems mentioned above, I feel that despite their glut of strong riders, the place of Katusha seems the most vulnerable should BMC be invited.

There is however a lifeline which has recently been cast out by the Tour organisers which is that they are considering increasing the number of teams to 22, which may or may not result in rider numbers being reduced from nine to eight per team. This moves the number of wild card places for aspiring teams up from four to six. So with, as I see it, Radio Shack, Cervelo, Garmin, Katusha and BMC Racing taking the first five wild card places, this leaves Skil-Shimano, Vacansoleil, Xacobeo-Galicia, Besson Sojasun and Team Sky.

Firstly, I think that Xacobeo-Galicia will not be considered. They are a modest Spanish setup who tend to perform only in stage races in their home country. They also have no riders who have previously taken part in the Tour de France. Then there is Skil-Shimano who were granted one of the coveted wild card places last year. This by no means guarantess them a place this time around though. One of the other interesting aspects of the Tour last year was the daily struggle of ‘the worst climber ever‘ Kenny van Hummel. He endeared himself to plenty of fans and many feel that he deserves an inclusion in next year’s race. But I really don’t feel that is a valid reason for a team’s inclusion and I think Skil-Shimano will be overlooked next year.

That leaves Vacansoleil, Besson-Sojasun and Team Sky for the last remaining place. Team Sky’s trump cards that they’ll be relying on for that precious invite will be former Tour stage winners Simon Gerrans, Kurt Asle-Arvesen, Juan Antonio Flecha and Sylvain Calzati. They can also claim to have one of the most exciting up and coming talents in the world of cycling Edvald Boasson Hagen who will be hoping to take part in his first Tour de France. Vacansoleil on the other hand don’t have as strong a squad as Team Sky. However, they have signed France’s favourite brothers Romain and Brice Feillu who between them have won a stage and worn the yellow jersey. Also, what must not be forgotten is the fact that they are a Dutch squad. The Tour de France will be starting in the Netherlands in 2010 and Rotterdam would have paid plenty of money for this honour. It is entirely possible that ASO have made an agreement with the Dutch to extend a wild card invitation to at least one Dutch team. With the disappearance of Agritubel, the only viable French team left to offer a wild card to is Besson-Sojasun (soon to be renamed Saur-Sojasun). The ASO have a history of issuing wild cards to French teams, after all it is the Tour de France. Besson Sojasun have French favourites Jimmy Casper, Jonathan Hivert and Sébastien Joly on board. The prospect of one of the bigger cycling teams being bumped in favour of this French squad is very real and should not be ignored. Also, inviting Radio Shack, Garmin and BMC while leaving out Besson-Sojasun would lead to the prospect of there being the  same number of USA based teams in the Tour as French based teams, not something that ASO would take kindly to.

In a recent interview with Simon Gerrans in the January 2010 issue of Cycle Sport, he states that the reason he left Cervelo for Team Sky is that he was not picked for the Tour team. He didn’t fit the mold of either a domestique for Sastre in the mountains or a lead out man for Hushovd in the sprints so he was excluded. Gerrans may have moved to a team in which he will assume a leader’s role, but if I were him I wouldn’t be booking his flight to Rotterdam just yet. It may take a stellar performance by Team Sky’s riders in the Spring to tip the wild card scales in their direction. But with the undoubted talent of Edvald Boassan Hagen on board, they just might have the rider capable of winning enough races to get them to France in July.