Acknowledged superiority

Thoughts from the Glasgow 2023 Men's Road Race

The gruppetto ascends the ‘Mur’ of Montrose Street for the final time. Photo: Callum Devereux

In analysing the strength of his brother Louison’s rivals, Jean Bobet identified the riders of his generation as ‘aware of their rank, but never sure of their superiority’. For a long time today, the strongest riders repeatedly formed and reformed groups of escape until they finally broke free. By that point each kept attempting to accelerate from the other until Mathieu van der Poel made it stick. Bobet above the eery Scottish gloom, he was superior to them all. Yet this does not reflect the experience of the viewer or even that of the spectator, the role I today occupied partway up the so-hyped ‘Mur’ of Montrose Street. It was the complete experience of a bike race, even if my understanding of the race itself may lack. It is the experience that leaves eyes dusty, the smell of burnt clutch lingering. Lionel Birnie described it best, the all-consuming aura of spectating offers an incomplete three-dimensional portrait of a race, distinct from the complete two-dimensional nature of television pictures. You don’t so much see riders win, as you feel their suffering, in a manner that can feel far too real for what is ultimately our entertainment.

In Edinburgh this morning, riders gathered awkwardly in a tight car park, scootering themselves in front of the sign-in stage where they would then be formally introduced to a damp field of cycling puritans. Monegasque Victor Langelloti was first, his frame towering over the stage announcers. His insecurity of standing alone was only exacerbated when a pen couldn’t be found, leaving him purposeless on stage, unsure of why the formality of such fuss even prevailed. Rien Schuurhuis at least had his family there. The Vatican City’s sole entrant was watched on by his Australian wife, whose ambassadorship to the microstate had given the 40-year-old Dutch-born entrant a peculiar opportunity. An opportunity worthy of a family holiday. Further riders, and soon whole teams, were eventually introduced – gradually shifting into athletes who were confident of their ability; able to assure themselves, as much as anyone else, of their place. Yet that morning, all remained unsure of any superiority, trapped in a malaise of doubt that can undermine anyone pre-race.

By this point, I had crossed over to Glasgow, where news on the race became suddenly scant. João Almeida apparently crashed. Rien Schuurhuis supposedly made a breakaway – immediately counting himself a part of the race, defending the place afforded to every UCI member. News of the environmental protest that disrupted the race received no greater attention than that paid to it by television pictures. Yet at once, time slowed, the weights on the feet heavied, cheers towards the amateurs ascending the ‘Mur’ reached surreal levels. Additional adoration was paid to small children with Froome-esque elbows, or teenagers on hire bikes, shopping baskets boozed to the brim. From the top of the climb, Danish and Belgian fans swamped the roadside, blasting out europop accessorised around the fandom of cult-favourite riders, the ballad of Stefan Küng awarded notable airplay. Time only moved slower.

As the race resumed, the modern-day isolés were largely vanquished on the Crow Road climb, before a union of Belgian, Danish, and Italian teams set about making the race hard. Pegging in the breakaway would be an inevitable by-product, their own battle ahead only a futile pursuit of publicity, or a vain attempt to hang with the best when the race inevitably caught up. This was the status quo as the race approached our ‘Mur’ the first time, the breakaway rotating steadily, at a pace slower than that of the most ambitious amateurs. Some stretched out of the saddle – as much to mentally reset after the earlier enforced stoppage – the difficulty of the gradients suddenly didn’t appear the same menace that the suddenly enlarged Scottish Cycling Twitter community wanted to believe. Behind however, sprinters slowly cooked, talented domestiques were distanced in a litmus test of individual talent. Their weaknesses were harshly exposed beyond the collective strength of a trade team that they devote themselves to supporting. Ahead, in the intermittent sun, the quest for individual superiority continued.

In each lap, the race splintered, each nation of the triumvirate devoting a sacrificial lamb to be chewed up in the undulations. Briefly, Lorenzo Rota and Mattias Skjelmose accelerated, bringing Tobias Johannessen with them, and setting up Victor Campenaerts to chase far earlier than intended. Dozens soon retired, testament to the intensity to which the race was fought - continually sapping the strength of riders whose role lay in support. A brief Danish acceleration gapped a leading dozen from the peloton, exposing the drive the leaders sought to maintain. Only a shortage of teammates appeared to deny such early chasms sticking. By the fifth ‘Mur’, Vermaerke from the break accelerated, a last dance in the sun before fortunes turned bleaker, swept in a storm he could not reckon with. By the sixth, the new order appeared firm - Pogačar, Pedersen, Van Aert and Van der Poel rode ahead in isolation, behind lay only hope of less than full commitments ahead, a delay to the inevitable breaking of the proverbial leash. Further back, Michael Matthews suffered, unable to acknowledge the crowd yelling itself hoarse – drunk on the adrenaline of their proximity to immense athletic capability and boxes of Tennent’s. Campenaerts shared such adrenaline however, deviating to sprint into the love of the Belgian roadside mob, his action a caricature of their caricatures, acknowledgement that the sport should be a spectacle.

In one snapshot, Alberto Bettiol was ahead, a near 40 second lead holding firm over the chasing giants. He was chasing the rain as much as his freedom in this hunt. For nigh-on 20 kilometres, Bettiol was all the rage, phone signals clunky in the sudden downpours on the Mur. Whispers of a victory gradually emerged. To the Italian influencers in front of me, Bettiol was a dream - his small figure and wide face gaping for their Instagram story - for their lens at the cost of the viewers behind. Snapshots prove fleeting.

Suddenly things changed, the occurring of events passed us by. We were passive to the spectacle that we had travelled to witness. News soon emerged that the four had broken free once again. Dropping away was the defending champion Evenepoel, unable to match the exhausted remnants of the front group, let alone the attacking four. Quickly the four closed, at least quickly under the graphics of our text commentaries, under the unreliability of our weather. 40 seconds became 20, 20 became 10. Gruppettos continued to form, riders kept stepping off.

We could only wait to see proof with our own lenses, detached from the idiosyncratic word-of-mouth that was cast along the line. Bettiol was soon nobody, a distant figure in a private world, affected by the cost of 250 kilometres. Van der Poel was soon the body, his Dutch team passive to events in the build-up yet he was ready for this precise moment. As in Milan-Sanremo, within moments the outcome appeared pre-determined. Though desperate shouts of a crash initially held concern, our oblivion to reality dismissed such rumour when he reached us as expected. He was far ahead of all else who dared to encroach on what was, ultimately, his world to rule. Behind for the final time, Van Aert accelerated on the Mur, leaving Pogačar grimacing unlike anything one could have foreseen, despite our recent exposure to his weaknesses.

Wout van Aert accelerates away from Mads Pedersen and Tadej Pogačar. Photo: Callum Devereux

We don’t predispose failure onto our Galacticos. Instead, we model them around the maximal success they could achieve, the superiority we feel assured of on their behalf. Such a model needs redefining, or rather we should stop holding them above ourselves. If one thing became apparent under the murk of the Glaswegian rain, it is the humanity of riders, the brutality of the race, and the intensity of the atmospheric rush they keep on chasing, all in pursuit of a vain glory. They cannot be the characters we want them to be, only the people we choose to perceive.

In this light, perhaps Wout van Aert was right in insisting that he ‘moet just niks’, that he doesn’t need to prove anything. As a human being, his failure to win as he used to do does not diminish him. He is not to be understood in the binary of a champion, but in the complexion of a personality. The frustration of silver, behind his eternal rival, will no doubt sting – he is, naturally, human – but it does not detach from the rider he is, the person we finally can recognise he has become.

In the hullaballoo of the post-match scrum, trade team buses were scattered around the finish line in George Square – each looking after their own, guarding their protected riders from the horror of national federation provisions. Edging away, the scramble of people between bicycles – ‘normal’ humans and athletes side-by-side – gradually decompressed. Left behind on the side streets of Glasgow were only the faint murmurs of a winning interview booming out across loudspeakers. There, the new champion spoke of his career feeling ‘complete’. It is only the winner that ever can feel complete, to understand the fourth dimension of feeling and succeeding in a race, the struggle of victory inexplicable in words, impossible to replicate through the television screen. But today, on the Mur and at times within a metre of him, I maybe have a complete sense of quite how hard it all is. And just how superior Mathieu van der Poel finally proved himself to be.