The former Sky/Ineos road captain, now a directeur sportif with Decathlon–AG2R La Mondiale, answers your questions
If you could become a GC rider for one attempt at winning the Tour, which rider from the current peloton would you choose to be your road captain, and why?Fergus
I can only comment on Decathlon–AG2R La Mondiale and my previous team, Ineos. Until you work with a road captain and hear them on the radio, you don’t know how good they are. On my current team it would be Stefan Bissegger, and from Ineos Ben Swift. What I value is their directness. They’re both quite blunt: ‘Let’s not mess about, if you’ve got something to say, say it.’ They’re brave with their calls, clear and precise with instructions, not afraid to put their necks on the line. One thing a lot of people don’t realise with cycling is that the radio quality is terrible. You’ve got to be short, sharp and direct. If there’s any sitting on the fence, you’re fucked.
Do you think cobbles have a place in modern Grand Tours? The addition of the Montmartre sector in the final stage of this year’s Tour de France has the potential to be decisive if the GC is tight.Sam Johnson
No. I’m a bit old-school, I don’t think it has a place. I’ve seen the likes of Chris Froome, Geraint Thomas, Egan Bernal and Brad Wiggins, how they prepare for a Grand Tour. They sacrifice everything, they live on top of a volcano, do everything right, to go to this Grand Tour and be in the best physical condition possible. I think there’s too much risk, there’s too much on the line. As an armchair fan, yeah, great excitement: cobbles and gravel. But for that individual the risk is too high – and for the race. If you lose one of those GC superstars it’s got a knock-on effect. Let’s say you have a cobbled stage on stage five, and you’ve got Pogi [Tadej Pocagar] and [Jonas] Vingegaard. You should have two weeks after that of rivalry between two great riders, two great teams. But one of them crashes on stage five. What you’ve gained on one day of excitement, you lose in the next two weeks.
Do you think riders are too guarded around journalists now? Don’t we need to keep newcomers excited and intrigued about the sport?Hannah Nicklin
One hundred per cent agree. Any sport needs characters. When you look at the past, some of Cav’s [Mark Cavendish’s] interviews were great. There were a few less fucks given back in the day. Peter Sagan, some of the stuff he did: spraying his moustache green, mad celebrations and interviews. But the big downfall is social media. It’s terrible. It’s hostile. If people give a flamboyant interview and put their neck on the line, they open themselves up to get destroyed. People are so cautious and nervous. How many interviews do you hear where they say – ‘It was a great race, my team are very strong, it means so much to me to win this race.’ It’s like, Christ, mate, give me something else. There are people on Twitter [X] who simply aren’t worth listening to. They’ve got an opinion, cyclists see it, and it gets them down. People who write genuine hate and threats don’t realise they are talking to a human being. The sport needs people to show emotion.
A few years ago, I saw a couple of your Sky teammates stopped at a cafe in a mountain village (Isola village) while out on a training ride. Where is your favourite training ride cafe?Rooto
It’s a little cafe down on the Côte d’Azur, below Beaulieu-sur-Mer. Every time I went there, I ordered the same sandwich that wasn’t on the menu. ‘Can I have this, that and the other.’ They ended up naming the sandwich after me. It’s still on the menu: The Luke Rowe panini.
Have you encountered riders, or specific race situations, where you’ve been particularly surprised by another rider’s intelligence – or perhaps a noticeable lack thereof?Mikkel
I see things daily that blow my mind. As a DS [directeur sportif] there’s one basic rule of the convoy: do not pass the cars on the right-hand side. As a DS you only look in your left mirror, and if anything happens, you swing right. I see riders going up the right of the convoy and I wish I could say to them: ‘Mate, I’m not being a dickhead, but go up the left. You’re risking your life.’ Up the right is the death zone. In pro cycling the only ‘certificate’ you need is your legs – but there should be a sit-down test for stuff like that.
What’s the conversation like in the peloton; professional pleasantries, work talk about the task at hand, or salacious gossip?David Alderton
Racing used to be a lot slower and more relaxed. You’d say: ‘We’ll have a chat when the break goes, mate.’ And you’d genuinely have a catch-up and a chinwag. Now the racing is too fast to talk. The last years of my career I talked to nobody. I just tried to keep my head down and save every bit of energy I could. I used to try and lighten the mood sometimes, and say a stupid comment as I passed someone. But 90% of the time it’s work, not pleasure.
Are you good mates with Geraint Thomas, or was it purely a working relationship?David Thomas
I’ve known Geraint for 25 years. More. We grew up three, four kilometres from each other. We’ve done some great stuff together and what you see is what you get. He’s genuinely a good friend of mine.
What do Ineos need to do over the next five years to build a great team again?Paul Harnett
Take a step back and reassess. The short-term answer is go out and buy the next superstar, that could be a short-term fix. They were so successful because as one GC rider’s prime was coming to an end, the next one was coming through. They would invest heavily in the next one and it worked very well. If they want to be the No 1 GC team, they need to think about the No 1 GC rider in 2028, 2030. Who is he? Where is he? Is a current pro? Is he an amateur? That’s what you’ve got to be looking at. Who is that individual? You can make a great team but if you haven’t got that one individual, you’re fucked.
When you look back at all the other teams you’ve ridden against, which one makes you think: ‘That’s a team I could happily have ridden for, they were so good’?Mike Jarrey
Saxo Bank-Tinkoff. That was one of few teams that approached me during my career when [Alberto] Contador was at the helm. I spoke to them briefly, but when it came to negotiation, it was clear I was going to stay. They noticed I could have done a job. It would have been a cool option, they are classy team, always had nice bikes, nice equipment, big leaders. They had Contador, [Peter] Sagan. Michael Valgren was there in his prime, a good friend of mine. That’s the only point in my career I considered it [leaving Sky/Ineos]. If I could ride for any team past or present it would be HTC-Columbia. A big part of that would be to ride with Cav. I only rode with him in a trade team for one season and after that, many times for GB and stuff. But I loved riding with and for Cav. HTC had a lot of guys I got on well with. They had a great dynamic on and off the bike.
I much prefer watching the Giro and the one-day classics to the Tour, they’re much more unpredictable. Which races did you prefer to ride?Gerard Miller
The Tour and the Classics, for me. If you speak to Joe Bloggs and say – ‘What do you know about cycling?’ – I’m pretty sure they’ll say the Tour, and after that, the cobbled Classics. For me, they’re the biggest races, I think for the sport of cycling they’re the biggest races. Is the Tour the most exciting, or the Giro? It depends on your standpoint. You have the biggest riders at the Tour but you have more unpredictability at the Giro. This year’s Giro was one of the greatest Grand Tours I’ve ever seen. Not just because of the last day, I thought the whole three weeks was fantastic. But for me, it was the Classics and the Tour. They are cycling. As an athlete you want to race at the pinnacle, and that is the pinnacle.
Would you support your kids if they wanted to follow in your footsteps and pursue a career as World Tour riders?Andraz
Yeah, whatever they want. If they want to be a cyclist, I’ll back them. If they want to be a football player, I’ll back them. If they want to be a ballet dancer, I’ll back them. Whatever they want to do I’ll jump in head-first. But I wouldn’t steer them towards the sport, and I wouldn’t steer them towards any sport. I wouldn’t want to live my life through them or their success. They’ve got to be their own people, make their own decisions, choose their own route in life.
As you start your new career at Decathlon–AG2R La Mondiale, what is one Ineos way of doing things you want to copy, and one thing you are happy to leave behind?Andy Delaney
One thing I prefer at Decathlon is the real human nature in the team. They really care about the individual and the person. Any staff member, any rider, they see as an asset and you’ve got to perform: but beyond that they pull back the curtain a bit and see the human behind. How are you as a human? How’s the family? And I love that. I felt loved and respected at Ineos. But more so with some staff … I think staff are treated better at AG2R. From the get-go I would never say a bad word about Ineos. There is no bad word to say. It’s a great organisation with great people. But I think the way Decathlon-AG2R treat their staff is another level up. The infrastructure is still the best in the world at Ineos. They’re not the best team but in terms of infrastructure they are pretty hot. The departments, how they distribute responsibilities, is world-class. There’s definitely learnings you can take.
What chances do you think there might be for a Welsh World Tour team? Wouldn’t it be great to have a Welsh team modelled on something like Euskaltel-Euskadi, for so long a symbol of Basque pride?Ed Gdula
Yeah, it would be fantastic. But there’s optimism v realism. You need a huge backer, a huge headline sponsor, if you want to operate at that level. Thirty, £40m, £50m [yearly budget] … if you want to be one of the best £60m, £70m. It’s a great question but I think a World Tour team is a little bit ambitious. Euskaltel-Euskadi is Pro-Conti, where the budget reduces drastically, and that might be possible. It’s finding the right backer, finding the person who wants to take the project forward. It’s something I’ve never really thought about and it would be incredible. In Wales you’ve got a core group of riders who could push it forward. I think Welsh people probably top the ranks of proudest people about their country. They’re such patriots.
Your old teammate Chris Froome got dog’s abuse when he was winning the Tour de France because of doping suspicions. Tadej Pogacar’s peformances are on another level completely. How does the peloton react to this?Simon Watkins
Froomey’s successes came off the back of a very suspect sport, off the back of theLance Armstrong thing, and the whole sport collapsed for a while. Shortly afterwards Froomey was king of the sport. Whoever was king post-Lance Armstrong was going to get destroyed. We had some hate off certain people throughout our time at Sky because we were the best. Now Ineos is not the best, I don’t think anyone suspects anything.
Why doesn’t Pogacar have so much hate? I think it’s because the sport is in the best state it’s ever been in. And I think this is largely down to the inclusion of the biological passport. It really has cleaned up the sport. I think it’s a very hard system to defeat or lie when you’re getting all your results continually plotted on a graph, and you can test positive just for an anomaly. When was the last rider who got caught or went positive in cycling? I can’t think of one in the past few years. When I started my career, every month there would be someone. The sport’s in a good place. Riders and teams can say it, but the proof is in the pudding.
Do you feel theSkytrainof the 2010s is wrongly put down these days as being one strong team putting a lid on the racing?Michael Baxter
It’s quite a harsh criticism because what we did was quite new. No team before or since managed to dictate a race the way we did. I think to have that strength in depth, that organisation, that belief in your teammates, that chemistry in the team was quite special and unique. I think there was some beauty in what we did. Was it particularly exciting to watch? No. Did it put a stranglehold on the race and stop a certain level of flamboyance and panache? It did. Guys were afraid to attack. We had the strongest leader, the strongest team, and were the most organised. We were hard to beat.
Is Lance Armstrong regarded as a genius, or hated among the modern peloton?Les Rowley
I can only talk for myself, and I sit somewhere in the middle. He ruined the sport, he cheated, he broke people’s hearts. I was gutted when I saw the news: I was a Jan Ullrich fan but I still loved Lance, and what he did was unforgivable. At the same time, and maybe this is me being a bit soft, he made hundreds of millions for charity. He went through cancer and still achieved greatness, despite taking drugs [PEDs]. Every single person in the world has been affected by cancer at some point, and he did a lot of good for that, so there’s two sides to it.
With the peloton seeming to get younger each year, what do you think to replacing the best young rider white jersey with a best old rider (say, over 35) grey jersey?Vic Baker
I think it’s got value: the white jersey is becoming outdated. Traditionally a rider’s peak was 28 to 32, now you’re seeing 21-year-olds winning Grand Tours. So it is becoming a little bit extinct, because riders are so good, so young. I’d be all for it. To replace the white with the grey would be quite cool. Any rider who’s performing at that level at 35 or above, you have to say chapeau, because they’ve done it for 15 years, give or take. That deserves a round of applause in itself. So I think a grey jersey instead of white has legs.
Would you trade all the Tour de France victories you’ve contributed to – meaning the team wouldn’t have won any of them – for a personal win at either the Tour of Flanders or Paris-Roubaix?Simon Winster
Interesting one. You know what? I wouldn’t change anything about my career. I did some good stuff, I did some stupid stuff … I would like to think I did more good than bad. But no. It would be huge, but what I did in my career is what I did in my career. I’m very proud of being part of those Tour de France victories. I was a very small cog in a big machine but I played my role. I’m happy with what I achieved, happy to close the chapter. I look back and honestly, it sounds cliched, but I just smile. No regrets.
Road Captain: My life at the heart of the peloton by Luke Rowe is published byPenguin. To support the Guardian order your copy atguardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
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