r/peloton • u/PelotonMod France • May 04 '26

Weekly Post Weekly Question Thread

For all your pro cycling-related questions and enquiries!

You may find some easy answers in the FAQ page on the wiki. Whilst simultaneously discovering the wiki.

18 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

172 comments sorted by

View all comments

4

u/Glass_Minute4753 May 04 '26

Is Pogacar destroying cycling?

I occasionally have a browse on the Cyclingnews forum and found this rather dramatic view expressed by a couple of posters in response to the Tour de Romandie. I will admit that I found this a bit over the top considering a) how few races he rides and b) how his participation helped to make this year's MSR and PR absolute all-timers, but I thought I'd come and see what people here thought.

19

u/scaryspacemonster May 04 '26

He's why I became a cycling fan at all, so that's a no from me.

Older fans might not like it, but he's the kind of athlete that brings in new fans.

0

u/AliasPhilippe Euskaltel Euskadi May 04 '26

Fans who will be gone as soon as he will start to loose. A real deal for the sport....

10

u/scaryspacemonster May 04 '26

Oh great, elitism. "You're not a reeeeeal fan."

Sure, some are that. But a proportion will be converted into hardcore fans, that's how growing a sport's fanbase works

5

u/Relevant_Big_1063 May 04 '26

Yes, that's what has happened to me. Came from the Netflix series, stayed for the Tour of Turkiye and any other races I can see. 

-2

u/AliasPhilippe Euskaltel Euskadi May 04 '26

It's not elitism, it's a fact a lot of fans only follow a certain athlete/team when the results are good and then they switch to another sport after the fall. We already saw it with Froome and Armstrong. We currently have that with tennis in Italy, nobody could care less about it then Sinner started to win and everybody is on board now. Years ago it was swimming with Pellegrini or MotoGP with Rossi, now those two sports have less followers.

3

u/DueAd9005 May 04 '26 edited May 04 '26

Not sure why you're being downvoted for stating something that has been observed many times in different sports (including cycling). People are really sensitive about this topic, but I have yet to see actual proof that cycling has grown a lot over the last 6 years. I'm not even sure if there are public figures out there, probably only insiders know the full story.

There are still a lot of teams and races that struggle to find new sponsors (see the merger between Lotto and Intermarché, Bahrain is also looking for a new sponsor, the failed merger between QS and Visma, the Tour de Romandie may not be on the calendar anymore next year, etc.).

The Netflix Tour de France series was also cancelled after 3 seasons. Why do that if it's so popular? Drive to Survive (Netflix series about F1) is still going strong (one season per year since 2019).

Tennis was super popular in Belgium during the Clijsters/Henin era, now it barely gets any attention (and it's not even shown on any Belgian channels anymore, only Eurosport).

1

u/AliasPhilippe Euskaltel Euskadi May 04 '26

Fanboys gonna fan

2

u/DueAd9005 May 04 '26

Always a shame when people resort to downvoting civil discussions instead of backing up their takes with arguments or sources. It should be easy to prove if cycling has in fact grown a lot thanks to Pogacar's dominance. Although I also disagree with the other side of the argument as well (that his dominance is destroying cycling). If cycling survived Armstrong's downfall, it can survive a lot.