
I Made a Deal in a Bike Race - tacon
https://www.bicycling.com/racing/a22551004/i-made-a-deal-in-a-bike-race/
======
tomcam
Trying to understand the subculture here, and failing. If I understand
correctly, during a very important bike race the author made a verbal deal
with his competitor near the end of the race, and the competitor broke that
verbal deal.

Let me hasten to say that had I made such a deal, I wouldn’t have broken it.

But shouldn’t the author have assumed that his competitor was playing mind
games? If I understand correctly there are no rules against deals like this.
And I imagine there are no rules against lying to your competitor.

I would feel if I were in the author’s place that I had allowed myself to be
taken advantage of, that I had trusted a competitor, which is generally
speaking not a good idea in a race like that.

It seems to me this is the author saying he trained physically for the race
but got hoodwinked by someone he by nature should not trust.

Or is there something about the subculture I’m missing?

~~~
outside1234
There is a pretty strong culture in bike racing of making deals like this and
sticking to them, because in a break like this, if two people work together,
they have almost literally twice as good a chance of winning.

For example, Lance Armstrong and Marco Pantani on the famous Alpe d'Huez in
the Tour de France: Lance offered him the stage win if he would work with him
so he could make time on his rivals for the overall 23 day race general
classification:

[http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/armstrong-if-i-was-
the-c...](http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/armstrong-if-i-was-the-
carpenter-pantani-was-the-artist/)

In top level professional riding, if you renege on a deal like this, you will
have a seriously hard time making another deal like this in the future and
that will seriously impair your professional prospects, because these deals
are everywhere because of the multi-goaled nature (stage vs. overall vs.
mountain points vs. sprint points) of the sport.

~~~
loblollyboy
That's a stage race, that happens a lot. Help me win my war and I'll let you
reap the spoils of the battle.

But in a 1 day like the national championship I really do not think that such
verbal agreements are valid at all. Ok, I've never raced, but I've watched a
lot of racing and have literally seen this scenario happen multiple times to
just one rider alone (Peter Sagan). He was/is often the strongest rider but
was on a bad team and was prone to tactical mistakes when he was younger, so
he would do a lot of the pulling and get screwed at the end. Nobody wanted to
see Sagan lose, but nobody called the winners cheaters either.

~~~
ht_th
> But in a 1 day like the national championship I really do not think that
> such verbal agreements are valid at all.

That would be the case if each rider would have the same chance of winning and
each rider would be there to win. However, for many riders, the national
championship are not their main focus. They might be exhausted from a long
program of races in the previous weeks and are not at their best. Or they
might be preparing for other more important races in the coming weeks and are
not yet on their best, for example when coming from a training camp at height,
or are unwilling to take extra risks to prevent injury. And, of course, some
races are better suited to certain riders than others.

All these factors mean that there are a lot of riders that know they aren't
there to win, but would be willing to help another rider. For example, one who
has helped him before, or a team mate, or one would could beat a rival, or one
who is an underdog, and so on.

~~~
loblollyboy
You have said a lot of things that are kind of true and not relevant to this.
First of all, I think most of the people at the U-23 USA race in 2001 were not
there to be domestiques. For an U-23 rider in a non-European country I think
national championship is your big break. We can safely assume that at some
point towards the end of the race they were both in it to win it. Then Mike
kind of played Ian, but Ian LET HIMSELF get played. This scenario is very
common in 1-day races. Like 10-50% of (pro, 1-day) races I would say end up
with a breakaway getting away without enough of a cushion to have the luxury
of cat and mouse, and in many of these cases 1 rider is stronger than the
other. It's 'unfair' to the stronger rider, but this story proves that you can
only trust yourself and teammates. So either drop the weak guy or make him
help. If he doesn't help, well, actions speak louder than 'verbal agreements.'
I still think it is a fascinating story and mad respect for both guys.

------
NSAID
This same race was a topic in a recent episode of the This American Life
podcast

[https://www.thisamericanlife.org/668/the-long-fuse/act-
three...](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/668/the-long-fuse/act-three-5)

~~~
crescentfresh
Thanks! That episode's description in my podcast app sounded pretty
uninteresting so I had originally skipped it.

Have it queued up now!

------
feep
This kind of side deal in bike racing (especially when money is involved) is
very common. And accepted by most who race at that level.

It has always bothered me as a fan.

I know one of the riders, and I know of the other. They both seem like good
people.

Well-written story about aftereffects, and a reconciliation of sorts.

~~~
ben7799
Having done a lot of bike races you're even making deals with your teammates
realistically.

It's an odd artifact of the sport awarding prizes to individuals when it is
impossible most of the time to win without teamwork, and only one person on
the team that works together can actually win.

I don't fault the racer in this story who reneged on his deal to win.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
If making deals is acceptable to begin with, then breaking them is wrong. I
can't see any interpretation where Mike didn't do _something_ wrong.

~~~
Nelson69
It's also arguably not acceptable. There have been allegations of fairly large
amounts of money changing hand for in some of the deals, promoters and
sponsors tend to frown upon that stuff, as do sports books and it might be
against the law (sporting fraud) in a few European countries. The rules and
the codes regarding this sort of thing are fuzzy. There is also a class system
of sorts in play. When Lance Armstrong went to the media and claimed he let
Marco Pantani win on Ventoux in the 2000 Tour, that's against the code too but
because Lance was so dominant nobody said much about it. The fact was, nobody
could make Lance pay for that on the road. In the romantic ideal world, a
bunch of Italian teams would have worked together to prevent Lance's teammates
from winning some monuments (maybe Hincapie at Paris Roubaix, but he was never
really in it) that they were targeting but the fact was the team was built for
one purpose and that never was an option. The ability to enforce the deal is
part of it. Likewise, in retrospect, Lance going public with it was a scorched
earth psychological tactic that made his image even bigger.

I would say, at least at some levels (u-23 national championship might not be
that) that if you can get someone to gift you a win for an unenforceable deal,
then you beat them and you did it mentally. It's like all the secret rules of
baseball.

~~~
paganel
I don't think it is that unacceptable. I remember Jalabert giving the stage
victory to the other rider at least once in the Spanish la Vuelta the year
that he won it (they had been part of a 2-men escape) and more recently
Contador did the same thing at least once.

------
everly
I thought the author was far too harsh on Mike and the whole article comes off
as extremely self-serving.

~~~
phkahler
Mike was harsh on himself. Neither you nor I get to define Mike's personal
standards.

As for the author, I think (speculation) he would have gotten over it if his
racing career had not been cut short due to injury.

------
umvi
I think it probably haunted Mike more than Ian judging by his actions.

I'm glad the story ended in forgiveness. People make mistakes, especially in
critical moments when the stakes are high and emotions are surging.

~~~
chrisseaton
If you read to the end he admitted it was cheating - it wasn’t a mistake.

~~~
IggleSniggle
If you read to the end, you realize that it’s more complicated than that. It
truly and legitimately felt like cheating, and yet under the _written_ rules,
it was not _clearly_ cheating.

That’s part of what makes this such a great story. _He_ knew it was _cheating_
, even if it wasn’t cheating from a _these are the rules_ perspective. That
is, cheating exists within a cultural context, not just a written context. I
feel like this is a weird place in American law: the law is an interpretive
endeavor, and yet it is treated as a “rule” where loopholes are “ok” even if
it’s not in line with the spirit of the law.

~~~
Gibbon1
I tried reading the article, but the paragraphs of npr style fluff got to me.

But from the comments it's less cheating (breaking the rules) as it was craven
betrayal and fraud.

------
data_spy
This happens all the time. Julian Alaphilippe basically did that in one of the
classics and at Amstel Gold, the rider he tricked the last time around (J.
Fuglsang) didn't give in and neither won (although Fuglsang got 3rd). Cycling
is filled with ways to get others to work more than others.

~~~
davidw
Amstel Gold was pretty amazing, but unless you heard differently, that was
just tactics rather than any kind of 'deal'. Fuglsang played that one right -
to win you have to risk losing.

~~~
data_spy
Yeah, it's tactics but in the same vein where he says his legs are 'fu&ked'
and wants someone else to pull more and then outsprints them in the end. This
is a quote from Fuglsang: “From when he attacked, I was still the one who was
putting in the most effort because he always said that he was fucked. But he
did the same at Strade Bianche, and there he still got me, so that's the game
– that's the tactic."

------
Cyclone_
I just got done racing the La Crosse Omnium and my favorite stage by far was
the uphill time trial. No drafting, just going straight up the bluff for 2.3
miles climbing 530 ft.

------
pmarreck
Reminds me a bit of the old advice on “Playing to Win”
[http://www.sirlin.net/ptw](http://www.sirlin.net/ptw)

------
logfromblammo
I am flummoxed as to how anyone would consider any kind of verbal
communications during a cycling race to be "cheating". There are no rules
governing informal collusion agreements made during a race, as far as I know.

If there is any kind of problem here, it's that two or more colluding racers
that take turns drafting each other can race faster together than each of the
individual racers cycling alone, and that cycling features many different
competitions including some of the same competitors. This creates a trust-
dependent metagame.

So the correct game theory play against someone reneging on a false promise
would be for someone to seek out and draft the renegade racer in the next
national championship competition, without ever giving them the opportunity to
draft, thus punishing the betrayal in a tit-for-tat fashion. Seems like an
inconvenient and bloody-minded thing to do, though.

The business with handing over the winner's trophies to the runner-up just
seemed bizarre and awkward to me.

~~~
hjk05
> So the correct game theory play against someone reneging on a false promise
> would be ...

To be public about the false promis removing the ability of the rider to make
future deals thus removing their ability to compete on equal terms with other
competitors and seriously damaging their carriers. If you want to model the
real world using game theory, then you have to include the fact that players
can communicate outside of active competition, and that players have
reputations, tarnished by their bad faith actions.

~~~
logfromblammo
Players can also lie in out-of-competition communications.

------
vbsteven
Deals happen in lots of bike races, both in pro and amateur/youth categories.
But word gets around fast in the peloton if you make a deal and do not honor
it. If you pull a stunt like this especially in a big race like a national
championship you can be sure that practically no one will ever make another
deal with you and often riders won't even enter a breakaway with you. They
might even ask you to drop out of the breakaway or they stop pulling.

------
SCAQTony
Paraphrasing Jean-Paul Sartre here: We are condemned to have a free will.
Everything we do, we own and are entirely responsible for the cause and the
effect. But more importantly, what we do shows other people how they should
act.

Ipso facto, despite whatever culture exists in the cycling world, making deals
is cheating. Then again that sport has a long sordid history with that
subject.

------
Pils
I can't help to see similarities between this article and the recent phenomena
of competitive battle royale games. Currently, Fortnite is in the midst of
perhaps the largest open-entry tournaments in history[1], and seems to be
establishing these sorts of norms very quickly. Although "teaming" (direct
collusion, such as the event featured in this article) is explicitly
prohibited with serious consequences, most players implicitly acknowledge that
the competition isn't truly "winner takes all," at least at the individual
match level, since there are incentives for placing in the top 5, top 25, etc.

As someone who does not play Fortnite but is interested in the social aspects
of the game, one term I noticed being thrown around a lot in the competitive
subreddit was "w-keying" and its impact on the competitive aspects of the
game. "W-key" is a reference to the "W" on a QWERTY keyboard, or "forward"
based on WASD movement, and refers to (overly-)aggressive players in
Fortnite's competitive scene[2]. This term is derogatory; being called a
"W-Keyer" implies a lack of tactical awareness and immaturity as well as a
degree of unsportsmanlike behavior.

At first I thought this was sort of weird. "Aggression" in competitive games
generally refers to a tactics-level decision, and is thus is generally
accepted as part of the game, keeps other tactics in check and makes a better
spectator sport by encouraging proactivity. Think zerg-rushing in Starcraft,
Mono-red Aggro in Magic The Gathering or Serve-and-Volley in tennis. But most
competitive games are zero-sum at the match level (one wins, one loses, or
both tie), whereas Fortnite is not. In Fortnite's competitive mode, certain
types of aggression is akin to "defecting" in the Prisoner's Dilemma, reducing
the overall likelihood of both parties placing (due to one party being
eliminated, both parties using up a significant amount of resources, and a
reasonable likelihood that a third party swoops in).

I'm not going to go any deeper into the game theory aspects since I would
quickly go beyond my comfort area. However, that it's essential that such
phenomena are explored more deeply. E-Sports figures are the newest celebrity
class, and "people famous for playing video games" has gone from a Wikipedia
stub to an ecosystem that mirrors "traditional" star athlete culture. If
W-Keying becomes an unwritten taboo, how will punishment for breaking this
taboo be meted out? Will those who play the game The Right Way seek to
ostracize these players or seek retribution inside/outside the game? Will
exceptions be made for star players or would said players face even more
scrutiny? What degree of governorship do the companies that put on these
competitions have over this type of behavior?

[1][https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/22/18235132/fortnite-
world-c...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/22/18235132/fortnite-world-cup-
final-date-prize-money-new-york-esports) [2] I am not 100% sure if this term
is specific to Fortnite, Battle Royale-style games or WASD-controlled games in
general, I've just only encountered it in this context.

~~~
QuotedForTruth
Very interesting example! Another might be in Formula 1 racing.

Certain driver's (Senna [1]) have been known to force passes by putting the
other driver into a no-win situation. The passing driver might dive to the
inside of a turn with no hope of slowing enough to avoid hitting the car they
are passing. Their only hope is that the other driver will decide to avoid an
accident, allowing the pass.

If they don't make way then both drivers are out of the race. Maybe the
aggressive driver receives a penalty for reckless behavior. If they do make
way though, the aggressive driver now knows that they can do this again and
again to this same competitor without being punished for it. Some of the
greatest drivers in history (Senna, Schumacher, Earnhardt in NASCAR) had
reputations for this.

Another example could be unspoken collusion between poker players in a
tournament. When one player is all in with their tournament life on the line
they may be called by multiple other players who have more chips than them.
These other players can still bet against each other in a side pot, but often
won't and may consider doing so bad form. If one does continue to bet it may
force the other to fold. This improves the betters chance of winning this
hand, but it also improves the all in player's chance of winning and staying
in the tournament. By not betting the two callers increase the chance of
knocking this player out increasing their expected winnings for the
tournament.

[1] [https://youtu.be/9U_K76vPGYo?t=371](https://youtu.be/9U_K76vPGYo?t=371)

------
lifeisstillgood
I saw a listing a while back of the number of winners of the Tour De France
that had been disqualified for drug releated cheating - I think it was fully
half since 1990.

This is not one bad apple. This is an entire orchard.

At some point, where the proven drug users are merely fractions of percents
ahead of the others, (The Tour is usually won by dozens of seconds over
hundreds of hours of racing) should we not think that no-one can compete at
that level without drug use. And just try a reboot. Or stop the whole thing.

I am totally in favour of encouraging fitness - but most olympic level
athletes are frankly ignoring their bodies screaming at them to stop. cf the
biographies of any marathon runner.

That seems unhealthy

This is the closest article I can find to my memory :
[https://www.smh.com.au/sport/cycling/tour-de-france-the-
hall...](https://www.smh.com.au/sport/cycling/tour-de-france-the-hall-of-
shame-20121019-27wsd.html)

~~~
username223
Cyclists have been using drugs for a long time -- Tom Simpson was doped to the
gills when he died on Mont Ventoux in 1967. EPO, HGH, blood doping, etc. may
only be worth a few percent, but at the elite level a few percent matter. For
cycling, you can look at the power output on Tour de France climbs before and
after they developed an effective test for EPO.

Elite level _anything_ is unhealthy, because you're pushing the limits of what
humans can accomplish, at the expense of everything else.

~~~
Consultant32452
I don't believe there is even a single person competing at the top percentile
of professional sports (household names) that is doing so without one or more
forms of artificial assistance such as EPO, HGH, blood doping, etc.

I wonder, is this a controversial statement?

~~~
username223
Controversial? Yes.

Wrong? I can't speak for all sports, but I know an ex-professional cyclist.
Doping is less prevalent in the States than in Europe, but even in the States
you see amateurs doing it occasionally. Plenty of Euros dope, but more ride
the fine line of "therapeutic use" exemptions for drugs that _just happen_ to
improve their performance by a percent or two.

They're not all doping, but at least in endurance sports, many are.

~~~
paganel
> Doping is less prevalent in the States than in Europe,

That is certainly a strong statement, seeing that Armstrong, Landis or Tyler
Hamilton are all from the States. Yes, most of the European riders are also
not clean, but there are huge exceptions, like France.

~~~
username223
I was a bit hesitant to write it, but that was just my friend's experience on
the MTB circuit over the last 15-20 years. US Postal and Armstrong were awful
and shameless, but I think they were an outlier among American pro teams.
Also, there's less money in mountain biking, and it's not really a team sport,
so the kind of organized team doping Armstrong created is much less likely to
happen.

Anyways, I don't follow cycling as closely as I used to, in part because the
pervasive doping was just so discouraging. Hopefully some combination of out-
of-competition testing and biological passport will finally make the sport
relatively clean.

------
RickJWagner
<Spoiler alert>

No witty comment here. That story is a great read.

------
notananthem
Its kind of gross how cut and dry this is painted from the perspective of the
guy who feels he was cheated. I have to imagine this happens all day every
day- at least I know similar situations happen in the professional world and
are common. Raises, promotions, projects, etc. You can make hallway deals
sure, but someone's gonna sprint and get that prize.

~~~
IggleSniggle
And here I thought it was interesting from the opposite side. Mike made a
choice that was within the rules of the game but not the spirit of the game,
which already existed within morally dubious territory, and was punished with
a lifetime of regret, even though he won the prize. I don’t even remember the
name of the other character.

------
jancsika
I am 100% in favor of people lying about their deals in these cases, just as I
am 100% in favor of a future class of ransomware attackers who collect the
ransom and then destroy the key without ever decrypting the victim's data.

In both cases it improves the bottom line of the endeavor. For cycling you get
more dynamic races and race endings. For computers it means hospitals and
power grids actually go ahead and get rid of their Windows XP machines.

------
jonknee
Well that was a huge waste of words.

> Mike looked back. He saw the pack getting closer to catching us. He
> panicked. He offered a deal.

> A rider who is weaker or at a tactical disadvantage will sometimes offer a
> promise not to sprint for the win if the stronger rider will promise to stop
> trying to get away.

> Near a sign that said there was one kilometer to go, we rounded a left hand
> turn. I looked back at Mike. I said to him, “You remember our deal?”

> But Mike can’t remember if he acknowledged the other racer. He can’t
> remember if he nodded yes, the way I remember it, or if he didn’t do
> anything at all. He remembers only that when he saw the finish line, a
> banner across the road at the top of a short abrupt hill, he suddenly was
> sprinting.

> And as Mike drove, he made a call he’d long wanted to make. Long needed to
> make. He said into the phone that he had that jersey with him. He said, I
> cheated. I’m sorry.

~~~
umvi
Some people enjoy the details. It lets you immerse yourself momentarily in
bike racing culture which is incredibly interesting.

After reading Lord of the Rings:

"Well, that was a huge waste of words."

> Bilbo gives long lost evil ring to son Frodo

> Frodo goes on a long journey with friends to destroy the ring

> A few friends die; a lot of enemies die

> Frodo can't destroy the ring in the moment of truth because it has corrupted
> him

> It gets destroyed anyway

There, saved you from reading 1000+ pages of literature

~~~
jonknee
And some people don't so I provided the key parts. Surely someone else will
appreciate it, but if not it doesn't in any way prevent you from reading each
and every sentence.

I would also very much appreciate a summary if someone posted a 1000+ page
piece to HN.

~~~
learc83
No one is faulting you for posting a summary, but for calling the article a
huge waste of words.

