Former pros bored with Tadej Pogacar's dominance: "I'm sick of always having the same guy win"
CyclingSaturday, 03 May 2025 at 09:44
Speaking to EFE before the Titant Desert in Morocco, the riders Luis Angel Maté (Cofidis, Euskaltel) and Andrey Amador (Movistar, INEOS, EF) have criticized the extreme professionalisation of cycling today, that, according to them, makes everything more predictable and boring.
Maté, who hung up his bike after the Vuelta a España in 2024, directly mentioned the name of Tadej Pogacar to make clear his opinion on the lack of excitement in the races because the watts riders produce in training make it clear who is going to win a given race:
"I'm sick of running with Pogacar and having the same guy win every time. You see the watts they move and you know the result. Seeing the watts each one moves, you know who's going to win."
He then goes further by talking about cycling as a 'mechanized activity that moves it away from its romantic origins of the Coppi and Bartali era:
"A mechanized activity, where everything is technical, which allows exhibitions like those of Pogacar and Van der Poel. These demonstrations take cycling away from its origins. It used to be the romantic sport of Coppi and Bartali, close to the people.
"Cycling is the sport of the people and we cannot move away from it. With so much tech and control, we have lost contact with the people."
He says that now that he is racing other types of events, he is falling in love with cycling again because he doesn't have to keep an eye on the watts, "Now I get together with different people, with another cycling, cycling is not just watts, and I want to recover the origins of cycling with people who have the same concerns. I always say that cycling will change the world."
Andrey Amador, for his part, also makes it clear that he does not like the current state of cycling, from which he retired a few months ago for reasons that he explains clearly below.
"Cycling is becoming too professionalized and the cyclist is distancing himself from the public. Before I felt like a machine, I always did the same thing, I didn't enjoy cycling, the fact of being able to stop for a coffee..."
Do you agree with the two former pros? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below, and the poll:
Poll
Has cycling become too predictable?
claps 7visitors 7
Just in
Popular news
Latest comments
- what a pity... he could have easily won the stage. He stopped his attack.
maria2024202422-05-2025 - Poor decision to let Primoz come back. Should have tried to put time into him.
Front24222-05-2025 - You're so wrong ! Froome needs to go away!frieders322-05-2025
- Shows a lot of class for such a young guyCrashjames22-05-2025
- Think how strong the team could be without Froome consuming all that money with nil to show for it. Sad. Selfish on his part tbhCrashjames22-05-2025
- Tom Dumoulin said out loud what many people were already thinking.
santiagobenites21-05-2025 - He’s also taking the place and money of many more deserving (and just as useful) riders (who’d significantly reduce costs). Only thing CF does for IPT is help them stay relevant for discussion because there’s no such thing as bad publicity if you don’t have a reputation to consider.Mistermaumau21-05-2025
- We’ll see. I’m still trying to figure out how GT cycling went from being a climbing defined event to a 3 week event around a couple of short TTs. All the contenders more or less cancel each other climbing and then grow huge (as the media defines the time spans now) gaps when riding on bikes not made for GTs, quite ironic really.Mistermaumau21-05-2025
- When you read this you get the impression they ride without radios or don’t have a common language for communication.Mistermaumau21-05-2025
- That was a very nice ride by Richard Carapaz. His team set him up perfectly for that attack.santiagobenites21-05-2025
When I play football (soccer) with friends, I know I'm not able to do what Messi does, even in his older age. When I play basketball with friends, I'm not Jason Tatum or that new college kid, Cooper Flagg. When one person wins nearly all the F1 races in a season, as happens so often, does that mean we've lost the magical closeness of Fangio to what driving on real roads used to be like? I expect to watch stellar athletes when I watch professional sports, and I know how hard they work to arrive at those skills and efforts. (My daughter was a semi-professional athlete, and now coaches. The training involved is unreal.) When I go for a ride through the local hills, I know I'm slow (I'm also past 50 by a chunk). My bike is slow, my legs are slow, I'm so much slower than I once was, and I love every moment of being out on 2 wheels. My enjoyment of the sport has nothing to do with how good the pros are. Any athlete treating this remotely like an amateur sport (in terms of weight training, nutrition, lack of altitude camps, and so on) will not succeed. Sky, then Jumbo Visma, then UAE, made the sport more precise, more focused, and harder to win. That's what the pro in professional means, doesn't it?
There are so many counterpoints, Bolt and Bubka were never boring, nobody complained about it either. Normal people also like to watch for reasons other than being surprised or pleased by results. Pro also stands for progress, none of these guys are aliens, they’re just ahead of their time but others catch up when they learn what made the difference. Besides, he doesn’t win as often or regularly as some in other sports, even team sports. And, he’s “easily” beaten when the course doesn’t suit him.