Many national championships take place this week but often a country’s best rider is not taking part. Tadej Pogačar won’t race in Slovenia, Jonas Vingegaard won’t race in Denmark, nor Paul Seixas in France, Mathieu van der Poel in the Netherlands, Remco Evenepoel in Belgium and so on. This is causing a headache for national federations.
Riders skipping the nationals isn’t a new thing. Alberto Contador did it regularly. Chris Froome road the GB champs in 2010 before he was famous, and never again. But it does feel more pronounced. When Paul Seixas unveiled his plans to ride the Tour de France last April, this explicitly included skipping the nationals.
Outwardly the national championships are a day, or rather several days with time trials and age categories, to award a title but they’re also an event promoted by national federations and one of the rare moments where the public gets to see the federation in action. It’s a shop window and sometimes a money spinner if they can sell the TV rights and bank hosting fees. But this is diminished if the star power isn’t there.
The course can play a role, Vingegaard won’t find terrain to suit in the Danish championships but then Mads Pedersen isn’t riding either. Many riders don’t live in their home country either. The explanation for the absence is that several riders with an eye on the Tour de France tend to skip the nationals because it gets in the way of their plans. Riders must leave altitude camps, the race itself is often gruelling meaning they have to rest after when they’d rather finish a couple of dedicated training sessions this weekend and early next week. There’s always the crash risk too. In short because the best riders are going to the Tour de France they’re by extension sitting out the nationals.
The championships can still count, a rider who is on the long list for the Tour de France and wins their road race title this weekend might get the nod because of this. But this holds for riders well outside the superstar bracket who would draw audiences to the champs.
Some federations are thinking about a date change. But what to do? One idea is to hold the championships around the time of the world championships, so riders could race nationals one week and the worlds the next, or vice versa. But not easy, other parts of the calendar might have to be moved to fit this, eg no Vuelta or Lombardia overlap. Plus come the worlds plenty of riders have effectively ended their season already and so a September slot is no guarantee of participation. Pick any slot on the calender and it clashes with other races and objectives. A post-Tour slot? Sure but how many tired riders would prefer to take a break.
Another option is compulsion. In Belgium pro cyclists are obliged to take part. Only several high profile riders are not, like Remco Evenepoel and Tim Wellens. They risk being suspended by the Belgian federation for nine days… which means being ineligible for the Tour de France start. But a doctor’s note can absolve them. Only if they’re in peak form ahead of the Tour de France, what does the doctor do? Is it ethical to fake a problem, or to exaggerate a niggle as sufficient to exclude them? It’s happened before and it’ll happen again and risks making the federation look powerless.
For Red Bull there’s an added challenge because they lied about Evenepoel taking part in the Tour of Flanders, denying he would race it only to reveal in the build-up that he would take part, including releasing videos of him riding the route filmed during the Christmas holidays to show it was always part of the plan. Their media stunt grabbed attention but comes with a price and so whatever excuse they say about him now, nobody will believe them. This is not a huge deal, but does count.
Different teams have different priorities. Some love them as a source of UCI points. Some sponsors crave a national champion, others are indifferent or even slightly averse. Many companies today have brand manuals that run to many pages detailing the corporate typeface, the exact design of their logo, the precise colour tones and so on in part predicted on a unique international corporate identity… so merging this with a national flag can give marketing departments sponsoring cycling teams a cold sweat.
Conclusion
The Tour de France dominates the calendar and now it is even casting a shadow over the national championships. It feels more pronounced and routine now to skip the championships this week. There’s no obvious remedy, riders are free to pick events to suit. A date change probably means a clash with other objectives. And as Belgian shows compulsion just doesn’t work.
Napoleon is reported to have said “a soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of coloured ribbon” and the same holds for a national jersey. For those on the startline it’s a special race with a year-long reward.