Ned tells us why he wouldn’t want to be a cycling team manager
MUSINGS ON THE WORLD OF PRO CYCLING
I’d not want to be a team manager in cycling. Not that anyone would ever consider me for the role, as I demonstrate every possible type of incompetence for it. But just for the sake of clarity: if you are considering me as you put together the next super team, then I’ll have to disappoint you. It’s not for me.
The sheer relentless instability is the thing that makes it the hardest of all jobs in cycling. Yes, I guess the rewards are considerable for those who rise to the top; the Plugges, Lefèvres and the Brailsfords. But, for the most part, the job consists of endless worry. No sooner have you eased yourself into a new contract with a sponsor than the search for the next one must begin. Most brands (apart from the French ones and Astana) don’t seem to hang around for long. They get what they want from the sport in a few short years and then pack up and move onto tennis, or F1 or something sensible.
The return on investment in cycling is very hard to quantify. It’s an extremely inexact science, or probably best described as more of a hunch. Who knows how many more boxed salads and tubes of tomato paste the Dutch supermarket Jumbo has shifted as result of Jonas Vingegaard’s time-trialling ability. I think one day they just looked at their books and decided they could probably keep the millions they put into Wout’s pension fund and sell exactly the same number of avocados, little caring that their departure would leave our tiny sport reeling once more in its wake until the next bunch of corporate mugs come along with their sure-fire way to lose money in the bottomless pit of road racing.
Consequently, the latest attempt to salvage some sense of continuity and stability from the oddball financial structures has emerged, in something like the same form and with the same good intentions as many a redesign before. The teams want a greater stake in the races. They want a share of the money, effectively, which RCS (organiser of the Giro d’Italia et al) and ASO generate (and in the case of ASO, Tour de France organiser, this is quite a lot). Backed, rumour has it, by Saudi investors with their boundless sportswashing funds, this venture has the potential to get further than others before. Every organisation has its price and in the case of the Amaury Sports Organisation it runs into
