The Backpedal #4 - Wa Wa
We’re really doing this again?
Yes we’re fucking doing this again and we’re going to keep doing it because I’m a geek and I absolutely love it
OK, OK, fine. What have we got?
Well until now, I’ve always landed on a page with a big body of text to choose from. Not this one. It was only a matter of time before I landed on an ad or one of those in-betweeny pages. And today we have one of those in-betweeny pages, but I promised myself I’d find something interesting on any given page no matter what. So in Rouleur 18.4, we have the title page for an article about Warren Barguil, written by former Rouleur editor Andy McGrath.
This was during the time when Rouleur destroyed their own perfectly good numbering convention by inexplicably shifting from simple counting to instead putting the year followed by the issue number that year. So 18.4 was the fourth magazine of 2018. Thankfully they saw sense and took the 100th issue as an opportunity to return to normality. The issues from 68 - 99 should be ashamed of themselves.
It’s a nice looking cover
Well with Rouleur it usually is. This particular cover is an interesting one though because I actually have it in Jigsaw form! I got it as a Christmas present a few years ago. Simon Gill makes them and sells them. Listeners of The Cycling Podcast will know him as Simon the Photographer - but his last name is actually Gill, not Thephotographer. Christmas will be upon us in no time, so might make a good present for that cycling person in your life who you never what to buy for. You can get them here. https://www.simongillphotography.co.uk/puzzles
Right, so what’s on this in-betweeny page?
Not much, but just enough to get our teeth into.
…’very public fallout with his previous team’ ?
Exactly. I had actually forgotten about this but if you think the Tom Pidcock and Ineos scenario is a bad one, this is a story of a rider whose career with a team practically ended mid-race.
In the summer of 2017, Barguil was the French darling. He was the new Richard Virenque. He had just won two stages and the polka-dot jersey at the Tour de France riding for Team Sunweb, and he’d snuck into the top 10 overall. He was selected to ride the Vuelta to support the overall G.C. ambitions of Wilco Klederman.
Barguil didn’t want to support the G.C. ambitions of anyone. He wanted the freedom to be, as Daniel Friebe once described him, a whimsical flâneur. Flapping around in breakaways and winning the hearts of more French housewives.
The team disagreed and before Stage 8 of the Vuelta, Barguil’s own team kicked him off the race. I said this ‘practically’ ended his career because he did actually race on for the team in three of the autumn Italian classics. Afterwards though, that was that. He left one of the most successful teams in the world (they had Michael Matthews and Tom Dumoulin at the time) and chose to move down a division to Fortuneo-Samsic.
I’m struggling to think of a more public and obvious example where a rider was moved on from a team for just outright refusing to adhere to team tactics. If you can think of one, let me know in the comments.
How did the rest of Barguil’s career go after that?
Well he’s ridden the Tour de France every year since, finishing 10th in 2019, but he never won another stage. His biggest wins for Arkea-Samsic (as they became not long after he joined) were the GP Miguel Indurain and a stage of Tirreno-Adriatico, both in 2022.
He said in that Rouleur interview about Team Sunweb:
““I will never say it was a bad team because they gave me a lot of opportunities, support and confidence.”
That bridge is not burned. He talks regularly to his former team-mates in the bunch and mentions his respect for the Spekenbrink family.”
I mention this because in 2024, Barguil was back! He rejoined the same team which is now called Team DSM-Firmenech PostNL.
He turns 33 next week and his best days look to be a long way behind him.
Ah you’d miss him really wouldn’t you? When he was lighting up the Tour?
Ah you would for sure. For the trivia nerds out there, Matthews also won the green jersey for Sunweb the same year Barguil won the polka-dot jersey. Winning green and polka-dot had actually been done the year before by Tinkoff-Saxo with Peter Sagan and Rafa Majka, but before that it hadn’t been done since Abdoujaparov and Chiappucci did it for Carerra. And it hasn’t been done since Matthews and Barguil did it in 2017. (Corrections corner - thanks to Juhani in the comments - of course, Vingegaard and Van Aert did it for Jumbo-Visma in 2022).
As always on The Cycling Website, don’t be a bollocks, leave a comment.
