"I find UAE's dominance really frightening" - Patrick Lefevere claims growing budgetary gap within cycling risks ruining competitivity of the peloton
Cycling
Opening Weekend is here to kick off the Classics season of 2025. Not so long ago, all eyes at this time of year would have been on Soudal - Quick-Step. According to their now-retired former team boss Patrick Lefevere though, the influx of oil money into the sport is seeing the competitiveness of his team and others much reduced.
Notably, Lefevere points out the team of Tadej Pogacar, UAE Team Emirates - XRG as the biggest threat to a competitive peloton. "For the 'competitive balance' of cycling it will be crucial not to let the budgetary gap with the oil dirhams of UAE Team Emirates become too big," writes the Belgian in his column for Het Nieuwsblad. "I find their dominance really frightening. Last year they won 81 races and their team has only become stronger."
Even if Pogacar is taken out of the equation, Lefevere sees an alarming gap between the strength of UAE and many of the rest of the teams in the peloton. "In the UAE spring team, you can now also stack up the leaders. Tadej Pogacar is not participating in the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, but Mauro Gianetti grabs the basket once and on each of his fingers hangs a rider who can win the race," he explains.
"Anyone who has followed the races in Australia, Spain or Portugal with even half an eye in recent weeks will have seen Antonio Morgado, Jhonatan Narváez and Tim Wellens cycling prominently on screen. I expect them all in the Omloop as well," continues Lefevere. "As a reminder: last year UAE already finished in third, fourth and fifth place in the Tour of Flanders. Even without Pogacar."
That's not to say UAE are the only team targeted by Lefevere though. Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe and their 'sugar dollars' are also given an examination. "They simply bought together a very strong spring team in one 'mercato' with Laurence Pithie, Oier Lazkano, Jan Tratnik and the Van Dijke brothers. They brought in everyone who was on the market. Plus Maxim Van Gils, who wasn't even on the market," he concludes. "In football it is common knowledge: if you want to predict the final ranking correctly before the start of the season, it is best to rank the teams according to budget. The race - and especially in the spring - followed that logic much less, but in the meantime the power of money also plays a role here in Flanders."
𝙏𝙞𝙢𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙠𝙞𝙘𝙠 𝙤𝙛𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝘾𝙡𝙖𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙘𝙨! 😍
— Omloop Nieuwsblad (@OmloopHNB) March 1, 2025
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- of course it’s predictable. a dad is proud of his son. nothing else matters, and his dad was a celebrated rider in his own right. maybe if people respected the human side of this story, and these people, we would see fewer bidons thrown. lastly as a dad, I appreciate this. a dad should have be given grief for showing pride and love for his child. we need more dads and examples like Adriemij14-04-2025
- i willfully CHOOSE to believe in your theory about greatness being sharpened and driven by greatness, because in my ideal world that’s how i’d wish it to be. in this case, with mathieu in particular, i think the presence of first wout then tadej absolutely drives and consumes him to some degree. he’s a guy who admittedly gets BORED. and when mathieu gets bored he just goes and does something else. he’s very clear about the fact there are a BUNCH of things he just doesn’t really care about, and i think anyone who follows him has a sense that MVDP is here for a GOOD TIME, not a LONG TIME. my hope is that tadej’s greatness will keep mathieu focused and hungry. very sadly, wout no longer fills that role. he may again and i hope he does, but their career trajectories are going in different directions and have been for a few years now. i will be extremely sad for the truly SPECTACULAR van aert if his line MSR win is the only monument trophy on his mantle. at very least i want ONE roubaix cobblestone sitting next to it. he deserves to tell the story when the grandkids ask “why is there a big rock sitting up there, papa?”OCexile14-04-2025
- Why? He is being too hard on himself. No sane person will blame him if he stopped there and then.
KerisVroom14-04-2025 - You can find a quick explantion by searching for "finish line camera howtown". The camera only captures the vertical line. The photo that we see is a composite of vertical lines.KerisVroom14-04-2025
- Let us not go off the deep end for a start it us not attempted murder. At most common assault. Country dependent. Yes horrible to see and ob not a real fan of the sport or just a VDP hater. This has been going on for years look at Froome in the TDF and other sports such as football. That is soccer to the North Americans. Let the police do there job and hope the offender gets what is coming to him or even her.paultryan200214-04-2025
- Sure but talk about predictable comments, do we really need those (although this time it was more rambling)? Don’t love the media running after him to hear about it each time though. Adrie isn’t even that well informed about his son’s work, can’t they go interview people who have more interesting comments to provide like maybe his mechanic or masseur or nutritionist or driver,oh yes, they’re probably bound by nda’s, which is why no-one tells Adrie anything of importance, didn’t even know his son was sick before Flanders so some of his comments there turned out pointless.Mistermaumau14-04-2025
- I think with Tadej it’s often a case of his mind’s will being stronger than his racing intelligence, he’s lucky to be strong enough to recover from potential mistakes so knows he never has to worry too much about going past his natural limit but under pressure he makes more misjudgment than the average elite pro. I think Mohorič knows that about him too and possibly saved him from himself.Mistermaumau14-04-2025
- Thanks, strange, I would have thought with digital resolution and light performance these days, you’d see crystal clear high res images like you may have seen if you saw the close up of WVA knee wounds pic taken in-race as he zoomed by. Do you by any chance know what’s special about photo finish tech that leads to this?Mistermaumau14-04-2025
- Not to forget how their star rider is willing to play domestique for sprint stages, a few ladies could learn a lot from this. I was thinking, if either of Tadej or MVDP didn’t exist, the other could have reached Merckx monument level but then again, would they have the same motivation? Is it a coincidence they both have so many already and that the only other two who had more also rode concurrently? The one guy who pays the price of it is WVA who may come away empty handed, the best rider to never win a monument is surely worth an article.Mistermaumau14-04-2025
- So good it never happened, this team with MVDP is one of the reasons cycling hasn’t gone to shyt too much yet, I respect Tadej but I don’t think he’s even given much thought to the who and why of financing in sport and how naïve athletes just get used as little pawns in a bigger game.Mistermaumau14-04-2025