{"id":388896,"date":"2026-01-03T11:40:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T11:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/388896\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T11:40:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T11:40:12","slug":"in-the-past-it-was-doping-now-it-is-financial-doping-tour-de-france-stage-winner-warns-cycling-has-reached-major-crossroads-for-competitiveness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/388896\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cIn the past it was doping. Now it is financial doping\u201d \u2013 Tour de France stage winner warns cycling has reached major crossroads for competitiveness"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Bakelants\u2019 concern is not centred on individual riders changing teams, but on how easily wealthier squads can now dismantle smaller projects. The modern transfer system, he argues, increasingly mirrors football rather than cycling\u2019s traditional ecosystem, with buy-outs and financial muscle overriding long-term development.<\/p>\n

Teams operating with tighter budgets are particularly vulnerable. Once a rider performs beyond expectations, retaining them becomes less a sporting challenge and more a financial impossibility. In Bakelants\u2019 view, that dynamic threatens the very purpose of WorldTour parity, allowing the strongest organisations to accumulate talent with minimal resistance.<\/p>\n

Why budget gaps matter more than ever<\/p>\n

The danger, Bakelants suggests, is structural rather than short-term. Sponsorship-driven teams depend on visibility to survive, yet visibility becomes harder to secure when talent is routinely siphoned upwards. Sponsors, he notes, expect a return, and diminishing exposure weakens the entire model.<\/p>\n

That imbalance feeds itself. Riders increasingly prefer shared leadership roles at dominant teams over full responsibility elsewhere, even when both outfits sit at the same WorldTour level. \u201cIf you can ride for Team Visma <\/a>| Lease a Bike, UAE Team Emirates – XRG<\/a>, Lidl-Trek<\/a>, Red Bull – BORA – hansgrohe<\/a>, INEOS Grenadiers<\/a> and now also Decathlon CMA CGM Team<\/a>, your life looks very different compared to riding for Lotto-Intermarche,\u201d Bakelants explained. \u201cAnd that is also a WorldTour team.\u201d<\/p>\n

The numbers underline the issue. A multi-million-euro transfer may represent a manageable percentage of a super-team\u2019s budget, while consuming a quarter of a smaller squad\u2019s annual resources. \u201cThat is exactly my point,\u201d Bakelants said. \u201cA huge imbalance in budgets is emerging within the peloton.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jan<\/p>\n

Bakelants himself retired at the end of the 2022 season<\/p>\n

Lessons from Van der Poel and AlpecinBakelants points to Alpecin-Premier Tech as proof that alternative models can succeed, but only under circumstances that no longer exist. Their early commitment to Mathieu van der Poel<\/a> allowed the team to grow organically before today\u2019s hyper-aggressive transfer market fully took hold.<\/p>\n

That timing, he argues, was decisive. \u201cWhen he fully broke through on the road, the practice that is now becoming common was not yet really established,\u201d Bakelants said. In today\u2019s climate, such patience would likely be punished. \u201cIf Mathieu van der Poel had won his first big Classic now, an opportunistic team like INEOS or Lidl-Trek would certainly have jumped in with an astronomical offer.\u201d<\/p>\n

The difference, Bakelants believes, is that cycling has lost its natural protection mechanisms. Where once development, loyalty and gradual progression mattered, raw purchasing power increasingly dictates outcomes.<\/p>\n

A warning rather than a prediction<\/p>\n

Bakelants is not arguing that dominance by strong teams is new, but that the mechanisms behind it have changed in worrying ways. Without safeguards, he fears cycling risks entrenching inequality so deeply that upward mobility becomes the exception rather than the norm.<\/p>\n

The crossroads he describes is therefore not merely financial, but philosophical. Whether the sport chooses to address that imbalance, or accept it, may determine how competitive professional cycling remains in the decade ahead.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bakelants\u2019 concern is not centred on individual riders changing teams, but on how easily wealthier squads can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388897,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,176987,66980,172712,49602,77973,39733,85,165035,2845,19805],"class_list":["post-388896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-decathlon-cma-cgm-team","tag-ineos-grenadiers","tag-jan-bakelants","tag-lidl-trek","tag-mathieu-van-der-poel","tag-red-bull-bora-hansgrohe","tag-sports","tag-team-visma-lease-a-bike","tag-tour-de-france","tag-uae-team-emirates-xrg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}