Pro Male Cyclists – Give it a Rest!

We’ve all seen this doing the social media rounds…

Soccer player pretends he is injured. Cyclist pretends he is ok.
Soccer player pretends he is injured. Cyclist pretends he is ok. Source: Unknown.

 

Our sport is for warriors. Shut up legs, HTFU and all that. But pro cyclists go too far with the heroics, and others are put at risk because of it. Cast your mind back to the Tour of Flanders. Stijn Devolder bounced off the tarmac and cobbles several hundred thousand times. Many applauded him for being so brave and hard. I didn’t.

“Klaas Lodewyk crashed on the descent of the Paterberg; he got hit from behind by Stijn Devolder and actually popped his shoulder out of its joint. He was to be riding on Sunday (Paris Roubaix) but he’s out for a few weeks while he recovers from the crash.”  – Allan Peiper, Performance Director, BMC, RIDE Cycling Review, 11 April 2014.

Did this bingle happen after one of Devolder’s other crashes?  Did the shock, pain and injuries from his other crashes put others at risk? If yes, look at the result – BMC lost a rider for Paris-Roubaix and Lodewyk himself missed out.

Yesterday, Frank Schleck was ruled out from the start of Stage 3 of the Tour de Suisse. He suffered a concussion in a Stage 2 crash and the injury was deemed too serious to continue. It was too serious for him to carry on but it was OK for him to finish Stage 2, apparently. Somebody somewhere had ultimate responsibility of putting him back on his bike with serious concussion. Thankfully, he finished without incident, but it is still a worrying and frequent occurrence.

Riders carry on with concussions, broken collarbones or other fractured and scratched parts. What affect does this have on a rider’s ability to control a bike in an already crowded and nervy peloton?  And what affect are any painkillers to relieve the pain e.g. tramadol, also have?

Then there are colds, flus and stomach upsets. I hear people on the train or at work struggling for breath through coughing or flu. “Just go home; get out of here. You are spreading it,” I want to shout. I know for many it’s not a choice, despite our legislation here saying different. (I know, I had a boss who had no sympathy for sicknesses). But at my current and other workplaces, there are heroes, even with stomach upsets who just have to be at work because of that meeting about streamlining the stationery. Heroes for no reason at all.

You often hear of stomach bugs too ripping through entire teams, and this is why. Pozzovivo had the sense to pull out of the Tour de Suisse because of such an illness and also thankfully sparing us from associated stories.

I’m not going to go into the Team Sky/Froome TUE thing – I use al foil just for food these days. I will however agree with the sentiment expressed by several medical experts in this article on Cycling Tips. I also do not mean in this instance Froome put others at risk – i.e. his coughing is purely from his asthma related issues after a chest infection.

An informed medical source, who did not want to be publicly identified, also expressed similar concerns: “Using prednisolone, a glucocorticosteroid, for the entire duration of a competition – why would one even attempt to race?” he told CyclingTips…

…. “This is [usually] banned in competition for good reason – it is a potent stimulant and it is catabolic, not anabolic…..

… “Can anyone dope up for a whole stage race if they complain of a cough? The tablets have a much more potent systemic effect, that’s why they are banned,” he said. “Suggesting it is okay to race rather then recover in this situation would be medically unusual.””

Of course, winning a race like the Tour of Romandie and the exposure it brings for a team, sponsors and victor is nothing to be sneezed at – it’s nothing like a stationery streamlining meeting. However, a call still needs to be made about the health of the individual. And while the TUE issue was resolved, the process seemed a little unclear.

Pressure to compete and to perform clouds ethics. And in many of these instances, puts other riders and their careers at risk.

Perhaps it’s time for our cycling heroes to be a little more like soccer stars.

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