Standard of French Riders
This might be a bit of a random one and my knowledge and understanding of pro cycling isn't great.
A country the size of France, with it's history in cycling isn't really providing any GC contenders that I can see. Combining that and the enthusiasm that the french and the french media tackle doping stories etc can we take it that French rider's are generally clean?
Preparing to be shot down
A country the size of France, with it's history in cycling isn't really providing any GC contenders that I can see. Combining that and the enthusiasm that the french and the french media tackle doping stories etc can we take it that French rider's are generally clean?
Preparing to be shot down
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Clean, yes.
The sport has also opened up to many new countries so there is more competition for the top spaces. Traditional cycling nations have no automatic right to the top spots. For example there's no Belgian capable of making the grade in a grand tour as well.0 -
I think they have big infrastucture problems in the sport at the moment too. There's been a massive drop off in kids taking out licenses, cycling clubs, schools and races have been folding.
I seem to remember an interview in Procyling in which Leblanc said he thought that France being viewed as a clean country had done them a disservice as the riders were now convinced they couldn't beat other nationalities and had gotten into a "losers mentality".
That and I once went for a ride in the Alps and came across a french club, who waved me down. One of them had punctured and between 14 of them, nobody had brought a pump."In many ways, my story was that of a raging, Christ-like figure who hauled himself off the cross, looked up at the Romans with blood in his eyes and said 'My turn, sock cookers'"
@gietvangent0 -
Is it the case that what cycling is to France, footy is to England?
Hark on about the heritage and so on but never win anything.What wheels...? Wheelsmith.co.uk!0 -
Cycling is becoming less and less popular. It still has many fans but all those roadside fans, well most of them are just on holiday and there for a day out, they wouldn't know Contador from Schleck.
It's a shame for many Frenchmen that Julien Absalon doesn't switch to the road. We'll see what Romain Sicard does. As an amateur this year he won a pro race, and then he won the Tour de l'Avenir and the World U-23 Road Race. He would have also won the prestigous Ronde de l'Isard stage race but had a mechanical during a stage, fired by this disappointment he won the following stage, the manner of a champion.0 -
Kléber wrote:Clean, yes.
The sport has also opened up to many new countries so there is more competition for the top spaces. Traditional cycling nations have no automatic right to the top spots. For example there's no Belgian capable of making the grade in a grand tour as well.
Nor an Italian if we are talking in terms of wiining GCs.Gasping - but somehow still alive !0 -
And there are no Spanish rider under 25 in the UCI top 100 rankings.
Leblanc's comments are interesting, though.0 -
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The other day there was a French poll on favourite sports among the 14-25 age group in a free weekend mag, the kind they give you in train stations: 14-25, you know, the future.
So, football came first, tennis, swimming, skiing basketball were also up there, mountain biking was doing reasonably well, don't remember the exact classification actually.
I do remember that road cycling came 26th (yeah, 26th, like can you name 25 other sports in less than a minute?) and I do remember thinking that, well, French road racing is dead.
Cycling in France is still popular but it's now a leisure activity for ageing sports buffs: like I'm over 40, my knees aren't so good, I can't really run anymore, I've got money to spend on a bike so I'm gonna cycle a bit, it's fun and my doctor said it's good for me.
Competitive cycling is now a minor sport in France. The pool's getting smaller? The pool's been getting smaller for two decades. Now it's drying up. Obviously, there still could be a couple of young gifted French riders becoming GC contenders in years to come, I dunno. I mean Roche and Kelly didn't need an olympic pool to show they could swim. But round here, any up-and-coming local GC rider will have to cope with the local media pressure (Can he save French cycling and win the Tour soon? Most importantly can he do it clean? ) so no, I ain't very optimistic about the future of our sport in France.
But hang on, it can't be that bad, we still have the Tour de France, the self-styled biggest race in the world!
-Aye, we got the Tour. But then the English have the Wimbledon championships, does that make them a tennis nation?0 -
micron wrote:And there are no Spanish rider under 25 in the UCI top 100 rankings.
Leblanc's comments are interesting, though.
There was an article about this in a spanish papers and apparently is all to do with cycling being at an all time low in spain in terms of popularity due to doping. People are convinced everyone is doping, even today.x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x
Commuting / Winter rides - Jamis Renegade Expert
Pootling / Offroad - All-City Macho Man Disc
Fast rides Cannondale SuperSix Ultegra0 -
20 years ago aspiring British riders opted to live and ride in France or Belgium. Belgium is still popular among those that miss out on the Academy especially those going through the Rayner Fund but you don't hear of many going to France now. That's probably a combination of the improvements in British road racing and the decline in France.
It is possibly cyclical (the Dutch seem to be coming back a bit now, Spanish / Italians fading after being strong in the 90's) and also the introduction of a wider range of countries (influx of East Europeans in the 90's at the end of communism, the gradual increase from English speaking nations, Scandinavian countries and now some Japanese coming into the ranks). In addition the influence of the French is slipping due to their performances becoming less dominant and sponsorship being more international.0 -
Pross wrote:20 years ago aspiring British riders opted to live and ride in France or Belgium. Belgium is still popular among those that miss out on the Academy especially those going through the Rayner Fund but you don't hear of many going to France now. That's probably a combination of the improvements in British road racing and the decline in France.
It is possibly cyclical (the Dutch seem to be coming back a bit now, Spanish / Italians fading after being strong in the 90's) and also the introduction of a wider range of countries (influx of East Europeans in the 90's at the end of communism, the gradual increase from English speaking nations, Scandinavian countries and now some Japanese coming into the ranks). In addition the influence of the French is slipping due to their performances becoming less dominant and sponsorship being more international.
Would the constant doping stuff not put cyclists off living in France?0 -
France is one of the cleanest places to ride, certainly compared to Italy or Spain.0
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Very possibly so the sooner every country gets up to the same standard of enforcement and prosecution the better.0
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I think the assertions that there are problems in France probably only true in relative terms, i.e. compared to a degree of dominance France had in traditional cycling (road, track, cyclo-cross) in previous decades. That football may be now more popular is no real surprise, given the media coverage it receives. It also shouldn’t be forgotten that during the eras of Anquetil, Poulidor, Mottet, Fignon, Hinault, early Jalabert years, etc, French football was in the doldrums, so no competition to cycling in popularity or attraction. The balance has just been corrected in recent years.
This admittedly has meant French sponsors have cut back on their cycling team budgets – but they did this about 2002, not just recently. If Ireland knocks France out of next year’s World Cup, maybe the balance will shift again?
Also, MTB and BMX have captured a lot of the cycling interest in France, which in the past would have gone to road riding. There are about 250,000 riders registered with the main cycling associations in France - FFC (which concentrates more on racing) and FFCT (which concentrates more on sportive-type events) - and nowadays about 80,000 of those ride only MTB or BMX.
In recent years, the only time I remember reading in the French press of the possible demise of cycling in France was just after the Landis affair came to light (summer 2006), when the likes of Boyer, Guimard and Bernadeau feared cycling might go the same way as wrestling (which had apparently been popular in the 50s in France but had since just become a joke sport).
But that hasn’t happened. If you look at more than the GCs of the Pro Tour, French cycling is holding its own, e.g. in the final standings of the UCI Europe Tour, 3 of the top 6 are French, and amongst nations only Italy did better than France.
I know in the last 5-6 years some amateur races and cyclosportives have folded due to insufficient registrations but not really that many and at the same time a few new ones have appeared to part-replace them. *
* Not quite what I meant by replacement races, but I recently read that the clergy in France has now introduced its own road racing championships. The magazine article said about 25-30 clergy competed for the national ‘fastest priest’ title, while the woman’s national title went to the only nun who entered. The article questioned their use of ‘holy water’ as doping.0 -
I once met a group of about 10 Dutch riders at the top of the Col de Vars in the Alps. Like me they’d left the valley 17-18 km back and 900-1000 m below perhaps 1 hr 15 mins earlier, when it was in brilliant sunshine and about 25 deg C down there.disgruntledgoat wrote:That and I once went for a ride in the Alps and came across a french club, who waved me down. One of them had punctured and between 14 of them, nobody had brought a pump.
Determined to enjoy the weather to the fullest, before setting off they’d stripped off their gloves and jerseys and left them behind, and hadn't bothered bringing jackets at all.
But at the top of the col, by then it was about 5 pm, although still sunny, it was only about 5 deg C. Already shivering and with the descent still before them, they asked me did I have any spare jerseys, gloves or jackets with me!
We were heading in opposite directions so I don't know how they fared in the end.0 -
I know Spain well, and the Spanish cycling establishment just doesn't seem to get the doping issue.
I remember buying a Spanish cycling mag after the Olympics, the views of the people writing for the mag were sympathetic with Maribel Moreno. The reader's letters were much less so, so maybe as another poster said the establishment's stance on doping is costing popularity.
Interesting to ponder Contador's situation. He may wel be clean, but there's been suspicion about his teams. Would he be looking to join Garmin or Columbia if he were from a country where doping was seen as a bigger issue? Like I say, for all I know he's clean, but it's a question of satisfying the public of that fact.
Also interesting to see that it's only on the road that France is suffering. Still an outstanding track nation, strong on MTB, strong on BMX. let's face it, BMX & MTB are more fun than road riding, so if you can make a living and succeed clean, why bother with road?0 -
Sounds like an episode of Father Ted.Not quite what I meant by replacement races, but I recently read that the clergy in France has now introduced its own road racing championships. The magazine article said about 25-30 clergy competed for the national ‘fastest priest’ title, while the woman’s national title went to the only nun who entered. The article questioned their use of ‘holy water’ as doping.0 -
Kléber wrote:France is one of the cleanest places to ride, certainly compared to Italy or Spain.
This is a genuine question, how do we know it is so clean? I appreciate there have not been many positives but some scoff at UK being clean but we have not had many in recent years.0 -
knedlicky wrote:It also shouldn’t be forgotten that during the eras of Anquetil, Poulidor, Mottet, Fignon, Hinault, early Jalabert years, etc, French football was in the doldrums, so no competition to cycling in popularity or attraction. The balance has just been corrected in recent years.
This admittedly has meant French sponsors have cut back on their cycling team budgets – but they did this about 2002, not just recently. If Ireland knocks France out of next year’s World Cup, maybe the balance will shift again?
Excuse me but what balance are you talking about? Olympique Marseille sell 110,000 shirts a year whereas Française des Jeux sell about 3,000 jerseys. French TV channels give 650 million quid every year to be able to show that dismal premier league of ours called Ligue 1. Need I say more? Do you really believe it can shift back?
It's not footie vs cycling anyway: forget one minute about the Tour and you'll find cycling is actually way, way behind tennis, rugby, basketball, track'n'fields and several other sports in terms of popularity.
There's nothing new about this: during the Mottet'n'Fignon'n'Hinault era the French national football team reached 2 World Cup semifinals and won the Euro 1984: Platini and his posse were absolute stars -whereas cycling was fast becoming Granpa's sport. The truth is football dwarfed cycling a long time ago, you know.
Sorry to tell you my lifestory: I was a teenager in 1980s France. Never mind Fignon, Platini, Maradona, Noah, McEnroe, those were the sports heroes in my high school. At the time go figure, I was a Robert Millar fan: he was a Tour contender and most of my school buddies hardly knew his name... I remember old Miroir du Cyclisme mags from 1985-86, I might still have them in my attic. They'd already run cover stories like Is amateur racing dying? or How can we beat the decline of French cycling Well, the answer is we couldn't. Cycling used to be the French working class sport. I grew up in a working class area. Year after year there were fewer and fewer kids at my club. Now 98% of kids from working class areas wouldn't touch a racing bike with a barge pole.knedlicky wrote:Also, MTB and BMX have captured a lot of the cycling interest in France, which in the past would have gone to road riding. There are about 250,000 riders registered with the main cycling associations in France - FFC (which concentrates more on racing) and FFCT (which concentrates more on sportive-type events) - and nowadays about 80,000 of those ride only MTB or BMX.
Sorry again, but we're talking about road bike racing here. Not BMX, not MTB, not the tourers from the FFCT. In 2008, only 101,000 riders were registered with the FFC, only 65% being involved with road and track racing (source: official ffc site). Only 10% of these riders belonged to the minimes, cadets and juniors categories. Says a lot about the future of competitive cycling in France, doesn't it?. In 1988 we were already in decline, still there were more than 130,000 licence holders and MTB and bicross were hardly a factor. Can you spot the difference?knedlicky wrote:In recent years, the only time I remember reading in the French press of the possible demise of cycling in France was just after the Landis affair came to light (summer 2006), when the likes of Boyer, Guimard and Bernadeau feared cycling might go the same way as wrestling (which had apparently been popular in the 50s in France but had since just become a joke sport).
Er, don't take this the wrong way, but do you only ever speak to cycling enthusiasts when you're in France? Do you only read Vélo Magazine and stuff about le renouveau du cyclisme propre? Do you think Chavanel gets mobbed on Paris streets?
It's time to wake up and smell the coffee. Next time you go to my dear country, try any French mainstream media like TF1 or Le Monde. Ask your cab driver, ask the waiter at the café du coin, ask anyone who isn't particularly fond of that sport de ringards (that "tacky/corny/naff/old-fashioned sport" of ours). Pro cycling has become a joke sport in France. TF1 news, followed by 11 million people every night, only ever talks of cycling when there's a juicy doping story to tell- they didn't even mention Evans' WC win. Nobody gives a flying spoon about cycling races anymore, nobody except bike lovers like you and me, but just ask TF1 people, obviously as a market we ain't big enough.knedlicky wrote:I know in the last 5-6 years some amateur races and cyclosportives have folded due to insufficient registrations but not really that many and at the same time a few new ones have appeared to part-replace them.
Man, cyclosportives... Come on, we're talking about racing here. We lost the Midi Libre and the Dauphiné is struggling to survive. Do some research, go visit French forums, we're losing dozens of amateur races every year, in every region. Nowadays it's not unusual to see cat2-3 races with only 25 starters, just figure that when I was young we'd easily be 150... I could go on and on. Forget about clergymen championships, forget about the Tour's enduring popularity and forget the groups of recreational riders you come across on French roads. Clearly competitive cycling is not doing well in France and the odds are it will not get any better anytime soon.0 -
Hi Echo, thanks for your thorough reply, albeit with some counter-arguments. I suspect the main difference between us is simply one of coming from different angles. I know I under-emphasised the decline in cycling in France but that’s because I didn’t want other forum members to under-estimate the cycling scene in France, because I think it still more alive than many other places.
It’s not that I haven’t read of a decline in road racing in France (e.g. in some regions 30% fewer licences than 10-12 years ago and fewer races, only half as many participants at races compared to 15 years ago, etc) but it’s mostly in the national press I’ve read of these things, not the cycling press. In the same way you say TF1 only ever talks of cycling when there's a juicy doping story to tell (like France-Soir in fact managed to do only this week), I suspect the articles I’ve seen about the decline of cycling have been in the newspapers mainly because some of the press likes to put itself in the role of harbinger of bad news, and if necessary will then use one extreme example as the norm.
At least when the cycling enthusiasts in France address this issue, they mention the counterbalance of the huge increase in number of MTB/BMX cyclists and events. Those riders may not interest you so much, but at least it means not all the cyclists have disappeared, rather they’ve just changed style. And maybe one day, like Evans, some will turn to the road.
Nonetheless, the enthusiasts I’ve heard are level-headed enough to admit there has been a decline, and some of their worry (fewer participants = less publicity = fewer sponsors = fewer races) seems quite legitimate, although they still come over to me as pretty positive about the scene (maybe because I’m listening to the converted?)
Only some of their reasons for the decline, however, strike me as feasible - e.g. dangers from vehicular traffic in towns discouraging cycling, the current disinclination of many to put in effort to achieve something (modern society you could say), and the costs involved in cycling (which if you consider purchase/depreciation and upkeep of a good bike, clothing and other costs, could amount to £3000 per year).
I think the cost aspect is probably a significant factor. I understand what you mean about cycling once having been a working class sport. And I’m sure football was too. But both sports have since moved up the social scale, football because the middle-class media, and then later investors, discovered it, cycling because it became cool for those who had the free time and money to do exercise, be green and (after spending, to some less privileged, a small fortune) look good on a modern bike. Maybe therein is why French working class kids wouldn’t touch a bike with barge pole - because it’s actually been removed from them. At least they can still afford a ball.
Less convincing arguments I’ve heard, because they don’t just apply to cycling, are constant road construction, conflicts with other sports in scheduling and locations, and lack of free time (because pupils/ students need long study and homework hours nowadays, and some workers need a lot of time to travel back and forth to work).
I’ve also heard (which brings us back to Roscobob’s original question, whether French riders are generally clean) that some doping still exists at amateur level (although it seems it’s more amphetamines than EPO or whatever the profis use) and it discourages the clean rider, so he doesn’t renew his licence. I’ve only heard this from non-racing cyclists, so have no idea of its validity, as I haven’t of a last reason, which surprised me when I heard it ...
... Apparently some riders are put off renewing racing licences because they’ve found at races that cliques of 4-5 strong riders exist, and that if you don’t make friends with a clique, then they make sure that at some point in a race you get dropped so never manage a good result. And making friends involves some sort of cash payment to the clique. (What do you call this - ‘whitemail’, ‘pizzo’, ‘usury’???)
As for some other things you mention
- With shift the balance back, I didn’t mean cycling would be more popular than football (rugby, basketball, handball, tennis, athletics or whatever), rather just it might regain some its popularity and interest if the French national team were less in the spotlight.
- Yes, footballing France was beginning to be successful by the Fignon era, but not when Hinault first appeared or any of the big names who preceeded him in the two decades before. I don’t remember any French national team football successes between 1962-1980, nor any French successes in Europe at club level between 1958-1976.
- I don’t know if Chavanel gets mobbed on the streets, but he does have a fan club, ran I think from his home town near Poitiers.
- TF1 may not have mentioned Evans’s win, but I know it was on Sport 24, the sport website which belongs to the Figaro newspaper, so I imagine the newspaper also covered it. So it’s not that all French media ignores cycling with no French involvement.
- The Midi-Libre stopped because of financial problems at the sponsoring newspaper, and also because of some ethical concerns by the new owner and his new editor (the paper changed hands about then) about the newspaper being associated with a sport given to doping practices. Its stopping had nothing to do with the number of active (racing) cyclists in France.
(I don’t know why ASO, who then tried to replace it with the Tour du Languedoc-Roussillon, dropped this race after just one edition. Probably also out of financial reasons, especially as ASO are highly-profit motivated and it couldn’t be relied upon that the 5 Departements who also contributed to the cost of the Tour du L-R would do so every year. Eitherway, again not to do with numbers of licences in France.)
- As for the ‘waiter at the café du coin’ even if he isn’t that excited about cycling, at least he seems to know more of what’s going on in the cycling world, when it comes to the TdF or local amateur events, than I’d ever imagine finding in the UK or other places in Europe (except Belgium?), which I think is something.
This in a way brings me back to the beginning. Don’t take me wrong but you seem to give the impression that most of what you see in the future for French cycling is black. I don’t feel it is anything like black because no matter how low down you place its popularity in France, it is more alive and more in the public eye than cycling is in many other lands.0 -
Knedlicky-
Well I'm totally OK with all the reasons you list for the decline of road bike racing in France. As for doping it has receded in the amateur ranks, if only because there is now very little money to be made in a race compared with, say, 15 years ago. In French racing we also have to deal with the culture of the 'mafia', I can't even remember how you English speakers call this blatant case of unsportmanship: when a small, aggressive group of riders from different teams gang up in order to get all the prize money (primes and so on) and then share it at the end of the race -many racers get discouraged by this.
I agree the French mainstream media seem to relish every opportunity to slag off pro cycling but they (i.e. not the biking community) determine the general opinion. Image is everything nowadays and right now in France road bike racing (i.e. not cycling) has a terrible image problem: an unfashionable sport with a baaad reputation (some of it admittedly justified) -drug-infested, potentially dangerous, outdated, so expensive, nothwithstanding the fact that few other sports require such dedication. That's why I'm very concerned about the future: working class kids are not into bike racing anymore but middle class kids won't get into bike racing either, because of its image. Now who will be taking part in races 10 years from now? So I think this is more of a quicksand situation than you would admit. And I think that the French enthusiasts you come across may well be trying to keep up appearances: how humbling it is to have to admit we ain't what we used to be, especially to a British visitor...
Yeah, road bike racing is more alive and more mediatized (erm, can you say that in English?) here than in most other countries. But you know my family's Italian (telling you my life story again...), I go there 3 times a year. And let me tell you their amateur scene is doing much better than ours. Well, not as bad, at the very least. Why is that? Both France and Italy are traditional cycling nations, both face the same problems with that unfashionable, gruelling, drug-infested, costly, potentially dangerous sport of ours, so why is Italy faring much better than France?
That said I do realise I was being really negative yesterday -actually I had just heard about another inane FFC reform and stories of racers fed up with this, erm, federation and leaving in droves -doesn't bode too well does it. Still, I have to say you have the right attitude -bitterness won't take us anywhere. And yes, you're absolutely right, the scene in France is still more alive than it will ever be in most countries. And maybe that's why I read stuff on this very forum: to read from people from other parts of the world, coming, as you say, from different angles -people who aren't so blasé about road bike racing.
So I think I"ll just stop moaning and go for a bike ride tomorrow after work -don't worry, I always bring a pump and a spare gilet.0 -
Knedlicky, Echo - thanks for such an in depth, informed, intelligent debate on the issue - have really enjoyed reading both your posts.
When I lived in France I hosted a few lads who had come over to ride as neo-pros - one even got into Luc Leblanc's development team - and none made it, all turned back, went home, decided it wasn't for them for a variety of reasons - too much like hard work, the perceived pressure to dope (though none were or were ever asked to as far as I knew), the lack of real financial rewards. One is now an estate agent who sold me my house, bizarrely enough. He still rides (of course) but is content to shine at an amateur level and make his money elsewhere.
There's a big gulf between the recreational sport and the professional sport that is no longer being bridged.0
