The organisers of the Tour of Romandie should have been on cloud nine after pulling off a coup: Tadej Pogačar, the greatest rider of his generation (perhaps any) turning up with genuine ambitions of winning their race. After all, this is something that’s bee…

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For those of you who listened to the last Race Communiqué podcast (everyone, right?), you may remember Mitch laughing at me for suggesting that good riders should go in the early break at Liège on Sunday.

“What the E.B!?”

Were his exact words.

And not to throw Mitch under the bus too much—although I am clearly enjoying doing so—by hook or by crook we ended up with something genuinely extraordinary happening at Liège on Sunday. The third favourite for the race, Olympic Road Race Champion, Remco fucking Evenepoel, found himself in a 52‑rider early break that at one point held a four‑minute advantage over the rest of the favourites.

I loved this. Absolutely loved it.

This simply does not happen at Liège, and it wasn’t the finale that made the race special, but this phase. This part of the race that is usually a dull procession was what pushed the average speed to a record 44.4 km/h.

Sadly, there was no TV coverage for it, which is criminal, because it’s worth looking at closely. Not just because it was fascinating, but because it showed how a completely unprecedented situation came about, how UAE managed it (magnificently) and how an audacious move like this didn’t harm Remco’s race one bit (still 3rd!).

A 52‑rider break at Liège. Was that a plan? No. Absolutely not. There is no universe in which Bora sat down and said, “Let’s send Remco and Nico Denz up the road early and see what happens.” What we actually saw was the product of chaos and opportunity lining up perfectly.

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At the DS meeting for Flèche Wallonne each year, one thing is sure: we — the DSs representing the teams — are all in for a well-intended bollocking from the race organisers, the A.S.O.

The meeting the day before Flèche is the first time the A.S.O. have b…

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You never really know what you’ll miss when you stop.

As you edge slowly towards the end of a racing career, the thoughts tend to collect around the things you won’t miss: the travel, the stress, the hard training sessions, the rain. There are notions of missing the boys, or the kicks you get from racing your bike, but by the time the end draws near you can barely see the wood for the trees.

Oddly enough, I don’t miss the riding. I don’t miss the racing, or the travel (to be fair, I still do a lot of that in my current job). But there is one moment I cannot replace or replicate, and that I miss deeply: the first ten minutes after a race.

Those ten or fifteen minutes—after you’ve crossed the line and climbed onto the team bus or sat down on the pavement—are sweaty, confused, rushed, and freighted with exhaustion, or occasional anger.

Like a witching hour, something happens in that space between teammates and riders. There is a bond between people who have been through the same thing together. The battles have been fought and either won or lost, and what felt more important than life and death when you could barely get your breakfast down that morning suddenly isn’t.

You recognise the same exhaustion etched on the faces around you. Some riders don’t speak at all, some speak too much. It doesn’t really matter what is said—or not said—the level of understanding transcends speech.

When I originally wrote this in 2015, my good friend Darren Lapthorne had just ridden his last race as a professional. His career was distinguished, and he was ready to stop. At the time, I’m sure he wasn’t worried about missing anything.

Now it’s 2026, and in some months it will be the turn of a new group of riders. Among them is Luke Durbridge—another distinguished, long‑serving professional—pulling up to the bus one final time, sitting among people who have been somewhere kind of indescribable together.

I have no idea what Luke’s plans are post‑career, other than trying to make it to a pre-production meeting for the pod for once... Darren went on to work for V/Line (the Victorian railways), where over time he proved himself an excellent manager and has been highly successful in a new role. He is a devoted family man now, and—annoyingly—runs rather than rides, still very fast.

Eleven years after first starting this piece, with many more grey hairs and a lot more bike races chalked up as experience, I am still at the finish—within touching distance of the thing I miss most, but very much on the outside looking in.

It’s no longer something acute, no longer a sharp pang of regret at not being part of it. Instead, from a calm and content distance, I can observe it—and enjoy looking back on my own experiences.

Not only do you become happy for having known it, but I’ve found, rather pleasantly, that the bonds formed in those moments tend to endure. Of all the people I raced with over the years—at least the ones I liked—it only takes a moment together, even now, to feel the bond that was created back then.

The thing between you doesn’t disappear, and it doesn’t need to be recreated in the next career, or in every environment you find yourself in. Riders will search for it all over again, and there are healthier ways than others. Joining a rowing team is an infinitely better choice than staring into the bottom of a glass.

Some things you will simply miss. Some things in life aren’t the same anymore. But no matter what, you come out with more than you went in with.

Miss it or not—know it while you have it.

The Tour of the Basque Country — or Itzulia, as its now known — has always been a very Basque production. The Basques are a people apart. They hold on to and use a language that predates (and survived) the Roman Empire, and were crossing the Atlantic as far back as the 1500s to do a spot of whaling off Newfoundland, more recently they’ve turned out exceptionally talented football managers. If you have Basque friends, you will probably know them to be loyal, passionate, pretty direct — and unmistakably Basque.

Strong character, let’s say.

There isn’t a fixed formula for a one‑week WorldTour race, but there are usually concessions. If it’s flat, you get a hill day. If it’s mountainous, you get a chance for the sprinters at the beginning or the end.

Not here. Not in Basque-land.

This year, the organisers went against convention and built a race that was, effectively, the same stage every day. The 2026 parcours was brutal even by Sean Kelly metrics. One time trial — finishing, naturally, with a one‑kilometre ramp at 15% — followed by five road stages, each with a minimum of 3,000 metres of climbing.

The start list was punchy too. Del Toro, Ayuso, Seixas, Lipowitz, Roglič, Healy… anyone looking to sharpen up for the Ardennes or with GC ambitions later in the year: present and correct.

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To say that a lot has already been written about the Tour of Flanders would be an understatement. Even I — someone who loves cycling more than most, and is lucky enough to work in the sport — feel a little saturated in analysis and opinion at this time of year. This particular week is a lot.

The internet is going to burst: the people at Sporza are going to combust.

On top of all the usual speculating, we are of course witnessing proper history. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you’re going to want to enjoy this Pog show because it is special. It won’t happen again for a long time, and the drama now, with the stage set for him to take all five monuments next week — or even all five in a single year — is something we really should enjoy.

So, I know you’re all full of Holy Week, cobbled classics, De Ronde stuff. I know you’ve read all the superlatives, you’re emotionally exhausted by the Remco saga, and you’ve seen a hundred million reels of drunk Belgians waiting for the race to come from your friends who are there. And yet, I’m still going to talk about Flanders a bit.

Yep, fuck it. I’m gonna do it.

But!

Because we know who won and how, and because there aren’t any superlatives left to use or subplots left to analyse (poor Wout, etc.), I thought we could just strip it all back and enjoy the race with no plot, no narrative — just the way the UCI wants us to see races: via the number of points scored.

How many points did each team make, and how?

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It’s probably natural that when I watch races I find myself thinking about what’s going on in the car. It’s my job, after all. But having just watched this extraordinary footage from inside the UAE car during the finale of an incredible Milan–San Remo, I couldn’t help wanting to break down these eight minutes of DS’ing from Andrej Hauptman.

Let me say from the start: in my opinion Hauptman’s work here is close to perfect. What stands out is not what he says, but what he doesn’t say.

The video begins the moment UAE riders radio in to report Pogačar’s dramatic crash. If you thought watching this as a fan was nerve‑wracking, imagine being Hauptman — the person who works closest with Pog (sat next to his own boss) and who would have felt the full weight of responsibility to manage the situation calmly and still give the team their best chance to win.

What’s remarkable is how he maintains a cool head, keeps total situational awareness, never panics the rider, and makes clear tactical adjustments for the entire team — all within seconds.

So, let me take you through why these eight minutes of coaching are so vitally important — and so well done.

Caduta!

Hearing that one of your riders is down, is the worst and most stressful part of working as a DS. Hearing that the greatest rider in history and race favourite is on the floor 8km from the key point of the race, is likely the most stressful moment in the history of cycling.

Not so for Andrej Hauptman…

In the immediate aftermath of the crash, Hauptman begins by removing any stress or pressure from Pog. They have no idea what condition he’s in, so freeing the rider to get back into the race on his own terms is the perfect starting point after what could have been a catastrophic moment for the whole team.

“Okay, Tadej, you just do what you can.”
“Good job, guys. Good job.”

Already he starts to praise the reaction of the UAE riders, keeping things positive in a pretty dire situation.

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No tactics on an ice planet

Ian Stannard at Omloop, Neilson Powless at Dwars Door. You know what I’m talking about: those rare (and embarrassing) occasions where the lone wolf pulls off the win against multiple riders from the same team. …Somewhere a DS sits in the car with his head in his hands. Somewhere a team boss is about to pick up the phone…

On paper, Stage 4 of Paris–Nice was one of those occasions. Jonas Vingegaard found himself alone in front with four riders from Red Bull, who then conspired to allow the Dane to take the win seemingly unchallenged in any tactical sense.

The reality, though, is much different: on days like that, where the cold is the biggest challenge and just keeping going is tough, tactics aren’t really a thing.

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Sports managers have long been associated with a post‑event dressing‑down. We all know about Sir Alex Ferguson’s famous hairdryer treatment. Those with far reaching bike racing memories may even remember Peter Post, the fiery Dutch manager of the 70s and 80s who, by all accounts, loved a post‑race roasting.

When I was a young cyclist, we grew up thinking the bus was a place to fear after a bad day. Tempers would flare, soigneurs at the hotel would be told to pack bags, riders would be sent home. Whether or not it happened as often as legend suggests, the impression was certainly there.

These days, things have changed. I wouldn’t say mellowed—the pressure and stakes are arguably higher (and the rewards harder to come by), but as jobs have changed the person running the debrief is now rarely the person who signs the cheques. For years, the same individual asked sponsors for money, paid the riders, and then tore into them when they didn’t deliver. Small wonder those debriefs got emotional.

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Soudal Quick Step finally broke off the shackles and started to dominate this past weekend.

What? I hear you say.

We all watched Opening Weekend and they certainly didn’t dominate…

You’d be right about that, too.

Their moment in the sun on the first real weekend of cobbled classics racing …

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The desert is not the natural home of bike races. The first time I heard about such a thing was in the late 1990s, when the GB team went out to the Tour of Saudi Arabia. I was still a junior and couldn’t race it, but I was glad of that. Allegedly, the race was based almost entirely on one stretch of road, which the riders would ride up and down on in very basic out‑and‑back routes.

“My God,” I thought at the time. “I must make sure that I steer clear of any of that sort of thing in the future.”

Bear in mind that I can hardly stand to do a 10k run if it’s out‑and‑back, let alone a two‑hundred‑kilometre out‑and‑back stage of a stage race…

For the most part, deserts lack some of the fundamental things that make a race interesting to watch (hills), scenic (more hills), or of historical relevance (Europe). For teams and athletes, the countries where desert races take place also lacked a lot of the basic things you need: enough roads, the right infrastructure to host a pro peloton, or even a half‑dozen spectators per day.

Let’s leave aside the long list of things I was going to write about us not having at these races, and the challenges that come with not having your own vehicles, chefs, and so on. Instead, let’s look at how, in the (now many) years since, desert racing has become its own thing, with its own set of challenges and—perhaps—charms.

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Remi Cavagna Will Accidentally Win a Race in 2026

Every season features that guy — the rider who, from the DS car, drives you mad. The one who head‑butts a metaphorical wall every weekend, hammering themselves week in and week out in a way the public loves and the other teams hate. They don’t mean to reshape the race. They just do. They don’t mean to make a statement by not wearing socks in a prologue, but they do.

At FDJ, Cavagna is deep in that era now. Like Campenaerts in his Lotto days, he’s got nothing to lose and a huge diesel engine under the bonnet. He’ll chase anything, tow anyone, and turn himself inside‑out all season, often with no real tactical sense other than just seeing what might stick. At some point, through sheer brute force and persistence, it’s going to work. And when it does, I’ll happily claim that I called it.

Movistar (Re‑)Invigorated by Matt White?

Whoever drew up the seating plan at the Hilton buffet was clearly feeling mischievous. Matt White and his new Movistar squad sat directly next to Jayco — his old home. Whitey leaving Jayco was strange, but it may end up benefitting everyone.

Movistar were arguably the most dangerous team at TDU in terms of race‑changing moves. When Romo and (the other) Cepeda launched on the final lap to Stirling, they put genuine pressure on the GC. After a few lost years, a far cry from the mid‑2010s when they were Sky’s only consistent rival, they finally look like a team with ideas again.

On the weekend the race didn’t pan out that way (as the headwind after the climb was more suited to the sprinters), but they were my biggest concern at Cadel’s race in the case of an aggressive final.

The DNA of a great team has always been there. Now add Whitey, a bit more (in Movistar’s terms at least) of a modern thinker, strong motivator, and someone who likes his riders to race and I think they’ll step forward this season.

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For all of the incremental margins we try to improve, and for all the effort now poured into going fast and winning races, WorldTour cycling often misses a big one: the ability to use effort wisely — to recognise and simply chill out when the moment doesn’t matter.

There was a time when the best riders almost made a theatre of how casual they could be until it really counted. That (along with all the cortisone) was why you’d see riders start races in more clothing than you’d wear on a winter club run, only to make a show of removing leg warmers while others began to suffer, before miraculously appearing in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.

I’m not advocating laziness. I’m advocating understanding. Riders — and us in the team cars — need to recognise when a moment is truly critical and when it isn’t. In the current iteration of the sport, with its constant pressure to push forward, that distinction feels increasingly lost. Everything has become an ever‑lengthening drag race.

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But is it too early to talk about it?

I’m not sure that it is. Even though we’re on the eve of the first race of the year, the headlines of late have been, if not dominated by Simon Yates’s retirement, then at least strongly shaped by it.

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Why Frans? He’s not a DS who’s always on TV celebrating out of a team car window. He’s rarely flashy, and he’s never hitched his trailer to a successful rider in that sycophantic as some DS do to build a career.

I rate Frans because he’s a DS who — outwardly at least — manages to move with the times. Cycling moves fast, and since 2020 it’s accelerated even more. For any generation of cyclists, the sport they step into and the one they leave as riders are different; by the time they become sports directors, the sport can feel unrecognisable.

When Frans raced, riders still had to reach down to their frame to change gear. Watch the sprint in the 1993 Tour of Flanders and you’ll see Frans sitting down mid-sprint to do just that - a costly mistake, but also stark proof of another era.

From his retirement in 1995 to now, the sport has transformed. Peloton dynamics, team tactics, training methods, nutrition, optimisation, aerodynamics are just a few of the many things that are all completely different. Even doping, or not doping, has gone through entire cycles of how a DS must deal with his athletes. Sponsors, equipment, tyres, data, the language young riders use — at least three generations’ worth of change.

Frans was the DS at Rabobank (now Visma) when I was racing as a Junior. For the record, he rejected my many attempts to join the U23 team in 1999 (because I didn’t live in Holland). Despite not losing his job over that non-signing, he went on to become a long-standing pillar of the Rabobank/Visma organisation — one that would now be unrecognisable to the Rabobank of the 2000s.

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Has any rider ever gone faster in the immediate aftermath of a protracted contractual wrangle?

Yes. Wout Van Aert.

OK, so maybe that is the exception that proves the rule.

However, reading about Oscar Onley’s imminent move to Ineos in mid-December had me wondering about the short-term negative effects of what I’ll call agents’ delight: a late, unexpected, or messy contract buyout (and the inevitable payout).

This feels like a phenomenon that’s set to become the norm. Cyclists used to transfer as free agents, but with all the current talk of long-term stability, more teams are signing riders to extended contracts. Partly to lock talent in, but also as a way to raise revenue by selling the athlete later.

In a way, we’re all moving toward the Gianni Savio model, which itself borrowed from the old Italian template: give riders a shot, then make them pay when it’s time to move on.

Big Deals in 2025

This year alone we’ve seen some eye-watering buyouts. Remco Evenepoel’s inevitable sale from Quick Step (we all still call them QS, and probably always will, sorry) and Juan Ayuso’s drain on Lidl’s bank accounts (seriously, you’d need to sell a lot of cheap ham to make that money back) are the standout transfers.

Evenepoel’s move was telegraphed as far back as 2023, when Ineos (them again) were rumored to be making a ham-fisted (very good, Tom) attempt at a buyout. With that length of runway, his transition might actually be smooth.

Ayuso’s mid-Vuelta move, on the other hand, was like watching someone fall very slowly out of a taxi holding two bags of shopping. Weird. Still, it was handled very quickly, and how it pans out will depend more on personalities than on structural adjustment.

When I started thinking about this though, I had riders like Bettiol, Maxim Van Gils or serial contract sell-outer Cian Uijtdebroeks in mind—guys who seemed to go slower after a change in environment. Looking ahead, what happens to Onley, Girmay, Gee?

For a buyout to happen, there’s money involved, sure. But at some point, the parties have to believe the new team will be better for the rider—otherwise, things will dry up fast.

So why does performance dip in what’s supposed to be a better environment with a bigger paycheck?

Maybe the paycheck itself is part of the problem. A late, well-publicized transfer means the whole world knows big bucks were spent on you (like I said, Lidl needs to move a lot of ham now). It takes time to adjust to that pressure—plus the inevitable distractions: new cars, flying lessons, a new house, tax avoidance (probably). Issues that consume time and energy.

Then there’s the organizational shift. Cycling teams don’t all work the same. Some have in-house coaches, others allow riders to work with their own. Some boast strong performance departments and cutting-edge equipment; others, less so. Even if the new setup is “better,” it takes time to adapt.

New physios, soigneurs, chiropractors—all with their hands on a new body. New DS calling the shots with different styles. Nutritionists telling you to eat differently. Throw in a language barrier (less common now) or new roommates at races, and you see how much can go wrong.

Perhaps the biggest influence when a contract is broken is the not knowing. And this is often a by-product of the teams not agreeing, or the timing being off. Uncertainty is an absolute killer mentally. Not knowing where you’ll be as a cyclist is something you can’t shake. You need serenity to succeed on the bike—repeating good habits allows you to push boundaries physically and mentally. A question mark over your future destroys that calm.

Which brings me to the point: if changing teams mid-contract is destabilizing (and it is), then why—apart from money—do it? It seems you’re sacrificing short-term results so everyone gets paid, with the real sporting payoff coming much later. That only magnifies pressure on the rider.

Adapt or Fall Behind

Other sports deal with uprooting families and moving cities, states, or countries at short notice, and athletes manage. So it’s not impossible this becomes the norm in cycling—and riders will have to adapt much faster.

It’ll be fascinating to see how the seasons unfold for our gaggle of contract-breakers. They might be ahead of the curve, forcing cycling to evolve toward greater adaptability. Given the limited ways sponsors can recoup the escalating costs of running a team, a bit more horse-trading might not be such a bad thing.

When most people see crashes in bike races, they tend to be focused on the pointy end: a pile-up caused by too many riders fighting for one spot, a loss of control, an idiot from the crowd stepping into the road, unexpected road furniture, wet roads, high winds, or someone sliding out after pushing too hard through a bend.

These things happen far more often than anyone would like. A rider sliding out or overlapping wheels in a sprint is part of the sport. But, let me tell you about one of the most dangerous moments in my own working day.

When riders stop for a natural break, the race convoy gets messy. Large groups pull over, then rejoin at different speeds while resetting things—grabbing bidons and gels, adjusting helmets and kit, cleaning lenses, generally reorganizing themselves.

The first few team cars pass smoothly, but soon cars slow and gaps open as riders move around them. Further back, it’s like any traffic jam: cars almost stop. The convoy becomes a mix of big gaps and cars accelerating to close them, some doing so with riders glued to their bumpers—sometimes big groups, sometimes ones and twos —trying to get back to the bunch.

Around this, you’ve got individuals or small groups moving at their own pace, dropping out of slipstreams or choosing to ride up solo. There’s a rough pattern to it, and aside from the odd rider on the wrong side of the cars or fussing with kit mid-return, it’s mostly okay.

But then comes my most hated moment as a DS, and it happens often enough to deserve calling out.

Picture this: I’m driving with riders inches from my bumper with others just off my left rear wheel, closing a gap at 50 or 60 kph. Then another rider, who stopped later for a pee, swings back onto the road from the right (often in an enormous gear - the one they stopped in) at a near-perpendicular angle to my moving car.

It’s like someone riding out of a side street into a main road without looking. And they don’t look. I see this all the time.

Worse, they’re moving into traffic that cannot brake hard or swerve because riders are sandwiched between cars. At a glance, the rider might think I’ll slow, but they often don’t or can’t see the rider tucked up on my bumper. There’s almost no room to adjust, thanks to gearing and sheer lack of awareness. It’s not just testing—it’s fucking horrible.

The worst part? After you somehow avoid having a rider come through your rear window or end up on your bonnet, most people have no clue what just happened, and you just forget about it and move on to the next thing.

Incidents at races are avoided far more than they occur often thanks to the skill of convoy drivers, which is massively underestimated. Much like the riders, we all have to learn this on the job, there is no adequate schooling for this sort of driving - you just have to do it.

It’s not just the convoy. I just rewatched the 2025 Paris-Roubaix and noted that some of the most notable crashes weren’t on the stones but in technical zones at the end of sectors—riders overlapping while taking bidons or changing wheels. Colby Simmons and Davide Ballerini were two notable fallers. An absolute nonsense way to end a day of hard work.

The riskiest moments, to me, are the calm ones. Riders are so focused when it matters, bombarded by noise and information, that when there’s a pause—a feed zone or nature break—it must be incredibly hard to think about the traffic behind.

For all the talk about safety from UCI, CPA, SafeR, and others, as far as I know, nothing is done to educate riders on how to behave in the convoy or feed zones.

It’s not willful ignorance—most riders just don’t know. Why would they? Their job is to go fast, not worry about convoy dynamics. Some learn through years of racing, but many don’t. Cycling no longer demands a long apprenticeship where you pick up these things.

I’ve long thought riders should spend a day in a team car to see what works and what’s dangerous. There are plenty of hazards in this sport, but this one has simple fixes riders could learn. Literally off the top of my head:

Don’t ride into the road with cars passing - or at least without knowing what is coming - and when you do - do it at angle that is as narrow as possible to pass. Don’t pass cars on the right hand side. Don’t hang around in the cars taking bidons half-way up the convoy. Don’t expect your team car to be next to you at all times when you need it (Alberto).

As we push for a safer sport, it’s worth reflecting on these everyday moments where accidents wait to happen—but because they’re not televised, they’re overlooked in favor of debates about weather or neutralizing races after everyone’s already fallen.

Side note: I promise not to write too often about safety issues, but it’s December and a long way from the action, so I had to scrape the mental barrel. We’ll be back to LOLing about UAE soon, don’t worry.

When you look at possible race scenarios as a DS, you create a narrative vision of how you think the race will play out—how the actors you can influence will play a role, and what those roles are.

We take all the information from experience: previous races, hours of watching races on TV, the details of the course, the form and the competition. We add to that what we know about our own riders: from the coaches and the data, from the riders themselves, from each other’s opinions, and create the stories we think we might see.

It is, by and large, an extension of how we see the world: we constantly use narrative to make sense of what’s going on around us. We apply it to things we think have happened and to lay out a future series of events we think will happen.

When you go through this exercise before the race (or even during, as things inevitably change) one key thing to avoid is falling so completely for your own version of what might be that you can no longer see what is really in front of you. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is see what is really there.

Let me give you an example.

The Visma team car at Dwars Door Vlaanderen 2025. Ouch. Everyone thought they could have done a better job. As a friend who was there put it: “There are literally one thousand ways to win that bike race, and they tried none.”

Losing with an enormous advantage is a nightmare for any DS, not least because it seemed so obvious outside the car. You can’t say the Visma DS don’t understand cycling, or know how to win a bike race, they clearly do. I think instead it was a case of believing so much in the story they created that they just couldn’t see past it.

Here’s how I imagine it.

They had three riders, an enormous advantage, against one opponent (who, by the way, was there by virtue of anticipating the move, not following their acceleration). There would also have been quite a buzz from watching Affini’s move, which annihilated the rest of the race in the space of a couple of kilometres. With three very good riders versus one in the winning move, the race is effectively won. How it would be won was just a detail.

In Grisha Niermann’s seat, he would start to create the narrative of how things will work—and in this case, he had the disadvantage of too much information, which blinded him to what was right in front of him.

Neilson Powless rode for Visma for two years, so Grisha would have had an idea of how fast his sprint would be. He also had Wout Van Aert in the break, and the entire world knows how good his sprint can be.

There was also clearly a desire at Visma for Wout to win—to help him regain confidence and erase the memories of his horror crash in the same race 12 months earlier.

You start to see the story Grisha had in his head now: Let’s get to the line, no messing about, and Wout will easily take care of Neilson. He probably didn’t even mind if Neilson was second. They didn’t need to be greedy because they had fallen hook, line, and sinker for their own story. The fact that they probably like Neilson as a person probably just fed into the version of events they wanted to see.

What they failed to see was Neilson nearly dropping the others on the flat cobbled section close to the finish. That was where I, sat at home, thought—hang on a minute. That’s when I started to think about how quick Neilson actually is at the end of a tough race, and how—at the end of those races—strength, or what’s left of it, can overcome pure speed.

The next vital thing that wasn’t considered was the finish straight, and the slingshot effect available after a 90-degree right turn into a 400m finish straight, as well as Van Aert’s lack—so far—of real form or confidence.

The rest is history. Neilson wins, and Visma walk away looking like they had no idea.

But the opposite is true. They had a very clear idea: in their minds, they saw a very clear narrative based on the information they thought was correct. We all have blind spots—they’re made larger when emotion is involved—and developing tactics in the car is something you always do in a sort of tunnel of information.

As a DS, you can fall into the same trap before the race when deciding on a tactic or working out who to back. In the calls before a race, when you ask riders if they can do X, Y, or Z, the answer is almost always the most optimistic case.

You have to follow your instincts around the answers you get to help you create a story that will be robust enough to survive first contact with the enemy. On one hand, you can’t just dismiss the positive noises coming from the riders, but nor do you want to overestimate the reality of what you have on any given day.

Whilst Visma’s failing at Dwars Door was very obvious and public, there are plenty of times where the plan you’ve made falls apart before it can even really be put into action. There’s nothing worse than saying, “OK boys, this is the moment,” only to look up and see that no one is in the bunch anymore…

Sometimes you’re saved in your blind spot by things just happening that you don’t expect, and you take the success that comes with it. In other cases, you really don’t see the wood for the trees, and you experience the sinking feeling in the car: Of course things panned out this way—why couldn’t I see that?

As ever in this job, you have to take the rough with the smooth. I hold Grisha in the highest regard as a DS—even more so because he didn’t shirk away after that loss at DDV. We all—each and every one of us—know these things can happen. I would say, though, that finding a way to step outside your own ideas once you’ve created them is an extremely important skill as a DS. Don’t just fall for your own pretty story. Reality will always be there to make things the way they really need to be.