This week’s version of AIRmail from The Outer Line dives deep into probably the most compelling tales shaping skilled biking and the broader world of sport. From Tadej Pogačar’s historic fifth straight Il Lombardia victory and the talk over whether or not course design—not dominance—is biking’s actual downside, to Rwanda’s post-Worlds political maneuvers, the continued fallout from the “Kawhi Case,” and recent questions on sportswashing, athlete rights, and media metrics, the publication connects the dots between racing, governance, and world influence. Plus: perception on gravel’s identification disaster, a brand new chapter within the Wiggins “Jiffy-gate” saga, and what all of it means for the way forward for elite sport.

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Key Takeaways:

● The Most Dominant Season Ever?

● Is Pog the “Downside” or is it Course Design?

● Tens Days After Worlds, Rwanda Eyes Congo’s Capital

● Dwelling-Grown Sportswashing

● Gravel Worlds: Did They Matter?

● New Wiggins Ebook Revives “Jiffy-gate” Debate

Tadej Pogačar closed out his 2025 marketing campaign over the weekend by profitable his fifth consecutive Il Lombardia, cementing what might go down as probably the most spectacular season in trendy biking historical past. He turned the primary rider ever to complete on the rostrum in any respect 5 Monuments in a single 12 months, added a tenth such trophy to his assortment, and gained a staggering 40 p.c of the races he began. Briefly, Pogačar has successfully “hacked” skilled biking together with his superior health and daring racing type. The truth is, the Slovenian now has simply 4 lacking jewels left to surpass Eddy Merckx’s profession résumé: the Vuelta a España, Milan-Sanremo, Paris-Roubaix, and the Olympic street race. Extra placing nonetheless, he’s on tempo to match Merckx’s file 19 Monument victories by the age of 30, the identical age at which the Belgian nice lifted his remaining Monument trophy.

As is commonly the case when a sport is totally dominated by one particular person or crew, grumbles are gathering momentum, coming from followers decrying predictable and boring outcomes. However once you zoom out, Pogačar’s reign isn’t so uncommon within the context of recent sport. For instance, during the last 4 years, solely 4 male gamers have gained sixteen contested tennis majors, and solely seven groups have gained the UEFA Champions League competitors within the earlier 15 years. That is roughly much like professional biking’s tally of six riders profitable the final 20 Monuments. However, in different sports activities, era-defining dominance from a singular crew or participant is commonly celebrated as a touchstone of greatness. In the meantime, in biking, such dominance is commonly derided or considered with suspicion (though members of tennis’ elite profitable circle have been tripped up on doping expenses extra steadily than elite cyclists have lately). This “X” issue of belief might be one think about fan viewership downturn amongst many others we’ll proceed to discover as viewing metrics are printed and analyzed throughout this street racing low season.

Wout van Aert about to drop Tadej Pogacar in Paris.

However if there’s a actual downside, maybe it lies much less with Pogačar himself than with course design proffered by race organizers. Over the previous decade, laziness and groupthink have led a lot of biking’s most prestigious races to shift towards longer, steeper, and hillier programs – with the idea that more durable programs equal higher racing. The result’s that the game has created a near-perfect laboratory for Pogačar’s across-the-board superiority in climbing and endurance. In contrast, the races the place he was pushed to his limits and even defeated in 2025 have been these with flatter, and – because of this – extra chaotic profiles: Milan-Sanremo, Paris-Roubaix, Amstel Gold, and the Champs-Élysées finale of the Tour. But with this seeming “arms race” between race organizers to tilt the calendar towards relentless climbing, riders like Wout van Aert (the one man to drop Pogačar this season) and Mathieu van der Poel (considered one of simply three riders to beat him in 2025) have determined that they merely can’t compete. They’ve determined that sufficient is sufficient, and skipped the ultimate month of racing altogether. This sort of expertise drain is much extra regarding than Pogačar’s brilliance, and highlights a serious challenge within the trendy sport.

It didn’t take lengthy for Rwanda to pivot from its profitable internet hosting of the UCI street racing World Championships to start out making important regional political and army energy performs. As we feared in final week’s AIRmail, barely ten days after the boys’s street race concluded, the chief of the M23 revolt within the Democratic Republic of Congo – a gaggle well known to be the paramilitary extension of Rwanda’s military – introduced that it will march on the Congolese capital metropolis of Kinshasa to overthrow the federal government. Many within the worldwide group consider that this improvement may merely be “saber-rattling” to drive concessions in yet-to-be-initiated peace talks relating to beneficial territory that M23 seized within the Kivu space of the DRC. Nevertheless, saber-rattling might have additionally been a key Rwandan sportswashing goal in internet hosting the WCs final month: to bolster nationwide delight, recruit fighters, and embolden actions to annex the Kivu’s arable land and mining reserves. With 16,000 newly skilled M23 recruits being positioned and an estimated 10,000 Rwandan troops on the bottom – and the DRC military positioning likewise – there’s a brand new powder-keg able to ignite in a area already locked in an extended cycle of violence. Biking and the “neutrality of sport,” just like the 2018 FIFA World Cup did for Russia previous to invading Ukraine, has executed little to hold a message of peace for a number nation long-focused on ulterior motives.

In different worldwide developments, the hostage stand-down and peace talks within the Center East might defuse world tensions with Israel, though maybe to not the extent that the nation’s title will reappear on a WorldTour crew jersey anytime quickly. And it appears to not the good thing about Canadian star rider Derek Gee, who’s being sued for defamation and damages by his former crew, previously generally known as Israel-Premier Tech. Gee unilaterally broke his contract in September however the crew, managed by Canadian-Israeli billionaire Sylvan Adams, has already referred the case to the UCI for contract arbitration, to the tune of €30 million Euros in damages. On one hand, the crew might have reputable procedural and authorized grounds to demand punitive recompense for Gee’s actions. Alternatively, Gee might have reputable private and professionally-sound causes to justify breaking the contract. Whatever the UCI’s ruling, the case appears tailor made to land within the Courtroom of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) because of the sensitivity of the battle, wide-ranging impacts to sporting regulation precedent, and potential ramifications for the way nation-states sponsor athletic groups by which the athletes should not beholden to the sponsor’s political agenda or regime’s authority. Whereas the state of affairs seems tenuous, the result may make clear athlete and crew employer rights in a significant method as extra nation-states search excessive profile investments in world sports activities.

The premier worldwide convention bringing collectively sports activities governance officers and specialists – the Play the Sport convention – was held final week in Finland. Though The Outer Line was unable to attend this 12 months, the convention highlighted a lot of crucial points, considerations and controversies within the present world of sport. Among the many keynote addresses, Finnish Member of Parliament Sandra Bergqvist spoke about doping, the rising concentrate on cash in sport and the deliberate “Enhanced Video games” warning that “greed can tempt us with sooner outcomes, greater sponsorships, and short-term positive aspects – however equity should weigh heavier.” Nick McGeehan of FairGame mentioned an extended checklist of governance failures in worldwide soccer, concluding that “FIFA is so badly ruled that every one we will do is proceed to spotlight the rottenness.” Varied teachers and human rights specialists argued that the U.S. authorities is more and more utilizing sport to deflect home criticism and dissent – an rising type of homegrown “sportswashing” – and campaigned for stronger oversight and moral requirements. Minky Worden, director of worldwide initiatives at Human Rights Watch, highlighted immigration and visa considerations across the coming World Cup, and stated “FIFA has the leverage to deal with this and to stress Trump’s administration to roll again on this pernicious visa coverage. This World Cup shouldn’t be a human rights disaster zone.”

The UCI Gravel World Championships concluded this previous weekend, however with due respect to the race winners throughout all of the age-graded classes, did it actually matter to gravel racing followers? Aside from the Dutch crew drama by which Shirin van Anrooij aired reputable beef along with her crew for chasing her down when she was in place to win the ladies’s race, there didn’t appear a lot to cowl. This sentiment has been constructing because the UCI continues to push its Euro-centric branded gravel race sequence (licensing the UCI branding and designation to collaborating race promoters) – races that usually really feel extra like dust criteriums than assessments of unpaved racing mettle. Spiritually, gravel stays the area of privateers in sequence just like the Life Time Grand Prix and its iconic affiliated occasion, UNBOUND. Nevertheless, the UCI owns the rights to confer a World Champion’s rainbow jersey per its Olympic constitution, and by staging its personal championship race on a brand new course every year, has the flexibility to quickly steer the self-discipline out from below its grassroots founders. There are each good and dangerous potential outcomes of this new juxtaposition of an previous downside in biking.

By internationalizing the self-discipline, the UCI hopes to construct up the game in new areas and concurrently enhance biking participation. However this win-win is a lure biking’s historians acknowledge instantly: the concentrate on European races and host places caters to a longtime market. Biking is already anchored in these areas, and the followers and individuals aren’t new to biking however are new to the self-discipline. This issue was an enormous motive why mountain bike racing peaked rapidly after which stagnated for a few years after the UCI subsumed it right into a European-based “World Cup” sport within the late Nineties and early ‘00s. Many observers aren’t satisfied that this most up-to-date crop of rainbow winners can be able to profitable at UNBOUND given the true degree of specialization for such rugged occasions (and a lot of the huge names who raced in Limburg final weekend would avoid UNBOUND’s overlap with the higher-priority WorldTour early summer time calendar). And this can undoubtedly gas debate up till subsequent 12 months’s gravel world’s – or at the least till the following version of France’s Tro-Bro Léon, which is already thought of to be European racing’s most legitimately difficult gravel race regardless of being a UCI ProSeries street occasion.

Years-old allegations concerning the Workforce Sky “marginal positive aspects” applications, the “Jiffy-gate” scandal, and allegations of crew doping in the course of the crew’s run of dominance within the early 2010s are surfacing once more, upfront of the publication of Bradley Wiggins’ new guide – The Chain. Claiming that the crew “chucked him below the bus” Wiggins revisits the episode once more, and the lengthy and tortuous investigation which not solely marred his intensive accomplishments in each monitor and street racing, however which additionally led to the banning of crew physician Richard Freeman. Though Wiggins brazenly and actually discusses his former drug and alcohol dependency issues, in addition to the impacts of being abused as a youthful athlete, he has now cleaned up his act, is financially safe, and proclaims his innocence in the entire Jiffy-gate affair, saying “I might like to know a method or one other what really occurred.” Whereas many have written off Wiggins resulting from his previous controversies, he has proven outstanding resiliency and resolve to chart a brand new course for himself – and doubtlessly have a profitable second act in biking.

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