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.
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.
Making cycling an athletic version of diplomacy actually sounds pretty cool to me.
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.
I can't think of another sport that is quite so teamwork orientated, but so individualistic in celebrating the winners.
I'm not even sure if the winners are the 'best' riders. I'm reminded of when Bradley Wiggins won the Tour de France. He and Chris Froome had broken away from the other contenders, Froome was leading him up a mountain and Wiggins couldn't keep up, Froome had to slow down for him. Froome was the better man that day, probably that tour.
One common thing is to have the bulk of the team reign in a breakaway group so their sprinter can take the stage on the line. Or if the team have their man in the breakaway then they can slow down the peleton so the breakaway succeeds, there are so many goals to be gone for.
In F1 there are none of these advanced team tactics going on. Every driver wants to win, none of them are there to just win the 'high speed flat circuits' or just the 'street circuits', or to be a support rider, towing their team lead to the finish line to give way to them and let them get the points.
The fascinating bit of F1 is that every driver first and foremost has to beat their team mate on the other side of the garage. This is where the rivalries are. Teams can mitigate this by not having two Senna grade drivers (as if there is such a thing). Common patterns include having a junior rookie driver to partner with the gifted established star driver. Or, further down the grid, to have a pay driver who 'pays' for the team to have a premium commanding established talented driver. Sometimes the pay driver has something to do with the sponsor, so there was that Nakajima chap that Lotus partnered up with championship winning Piquet, keeping engine supplying Honda happy.
Moving on to today, Honda supply both Red Bull teams - Red Bull and Toro Rosso. Now you would think that there could be deals done to make the B team - Toro Rosso be a mobile chicane, maybe creating incidents to get the red flag and safety car out, or just tying up those Mercedes drivers during pit stops (where they don't have to be blue flagged to let the Mercedes guys pass). But there is none of this.
Or when Renault were supplying Red Bull they could have had deals with other Renault powered teams to achieve similar goals, keeping McLaren at bay (they were winning then).
Anyway, when you hear the excellent Lewis Hamilton talking about the team, he really means it. But the team is his side of the garage, not the Bottas side. Fortunately for Lewis, Bottas is a nice chap and he has respect for the guy that he never had when it was Rosberg (who has developed into a really nice guy now he has quit F1 and got into Formula E ownership).
One other difference in the team-ness of it all is that the cars are different. You ain't going to win in a 2018 Williams even if you are a born again Ayrton Senna. But in cycling it doesn't matter what bike you ride. Clearly my sit up and beg 3 speed won't cut it, but it makes no difference if you are riding Shimano, SRAM or Campagnolo parts. Even having a carbon fibre bike isn't a guarantee of performance over a hydroformed aluminium frame. What will make a difference is performance enhancing drugs, and, for most of the sport's history riders have been chasing prize money just so they can pay for the drugs. Sad but true.
There is irony in that cycling is so much dirtier in this regard compared to F1. F1 should be filthy with big oil and tobacco sponsors, million dollar salaries for starters and so many vested interests. But it is squeaky clean compared to cycling. It is also quite boring in comparison to the show that cycling puts on, I write this as a lifelong fan of F1. Cycling just takes so much to extremes in ways that no other sport can match.
Not sure on that. Either way, Hamilton, Bottas and Wolff often refer to the 100 or so Mercedes staff at the races and the 1000 at the factories.
Some of the teams are good at certain types of race track but it's often accidental or unavoidable. Red Bull (and before that Mclaren) had Adrian Newey designed cars which do well at slower speeds but both teams equally obsessed about engine power, with varying success, to compete at the faster circuits.
That's part of what makes it interesting, because there are so many tactics and ways of winning. It's not purely about athletic ability, but also about racing smart.
Roadbike races are inherently not experimental setups to identify the strongest rider, they identify the rider who passed the finish line first no matter how he got there.
Typically (but not always) this happens toward the end of a race, where competitors race prisoner’s dilemma of sorts: by working together, they can have a higher chance of clinching the 1 and 2 spots, but when one racer is demonstrably stronger than the other, the stronger rider might reasonably worry that the weaker rider will “defect” and sprint for first place. Working together improves their chance of a first-or-second finish, but might decrease their chance of a strictly first-place finish if the weaker rider defects and sprints for the finish. If the stronger rider defects and drops the weaker rider, they risk getting caught by the pack and not making a podium at all.
The deal is that the weaker rider will take second, giving first place to the stronger rider and ensuring mutual cooperation that increases both their chances of a podium finish.
In this instance, the weaker rider promised to cooperate and later defected.
It also makes a lot more sense in stage races. The win for the day's stage is not the only win to be had. The overall race win is based on combined time across all stages. Often someone who is in the running for the overall race win will make a deal with someone who isn't. By not attacking each other, their average speed can be higher. One rider gets to win the stage and the other gets the benefit of working together to finish the stage in the quickest possible time. This allows them to gain on their rivals for the overall win.
In a single stage race, the win is mostly the only thing that matters.
Assume Rider A believes (rightly) that they're stronger in the break than Rider B. If they don't bring Rider B along, they might have a 50% chance of making first place and a 50% chance of getting caught and losing in a bunch sprint (time-trialists don't generally make good sprinters and vice versa). If they do bring Rider B along, but Rider A does more work (perhaps Rider B is holding back a little bit, knowing they will try to steal the first-place finish) they might have an improved 75% chance of staying away from the pack but there's a 50% or greater chance that Rider B will sprint and win the finish.
If they cooperate, Rider A has a 75% chance of first place and Rider B has a 75% chance of second place, with both having a 25% chance of a pack finish. If Rider A defects, Rider A has a 50% chance of a first-place finish and Rider B has a 0% chance of a podium finish. If Rider B defects, both Rider A and Rider B have a 37.5% chance of a first-place finish and a 75% chance of getting a podium. If Rider B values a 75% chance of second place higher than a 37.5% chance of a first place finish, they'll offer this deal. Note that this isn't strictly a Prisoner's Dilemma becuase there's no concept of a double-defection: if Rider A defects, Rider B won't have a chance to.
Obviously in a real-world situation you won't know these percentages, but hopefully it illuminates how both sides benefit from cooperation but lose if they want to cooperate and but the other side defects.
A deal is made. If the weaker rider defects and wins the stage (as in OP story), the stronger rider still has a better time than he would have without the deal - thereby reducing his overall total time for the multi-stage race.
The only thing he has to avoid (obviously) is making a deal with the SAME weaker rider for every stage.
The defector would then be this GC rider deciding to take the stage win AND the time gains. This leaves the other with only time gains which he may not value at all since he is not in contention for the overall race. In grand tours like the Tour de France or Giro d'Italia, 95% of the riders have no hopes of winning the entire race. They are there to help their teammates who do have a shot and/or attempt to win individual stages. Because of this they often lose lots of time on stages they aren't going to win and thus don't care about winning some trivial amount back.
The weaker/winning rider offered the deal. It was mutually beneficial. If they fight, they likely get caught and neither gets 1st or 2nd. If they make a deal and cooperate, the stronger/losing rider would get 1st and the weaker/winning rider would get 2nd.
I don't think that's a bad deal for either rider. To then break the deal is where the problem is. The weaker/winning rider would have had no shot to win without lying first. Thats unsportsmanlike in a sport where these deals are considered ok (which they are).
In OP story, the stronger rider is expecting to finish first. Contrast that with the case you described in parent comment, wherein the stronger (GC) rider is expecting to finish second under the terms of the deal. Very different setup.
Note that in my example I am, for the sake of simplicity, assuming a single race and am not talking about a stage race where one rider might be stronger but would happily agree to take second because the stage win is of lesser value than the overall time. When I refer to a stronger rider, I mean one who has a solid chance of holding off the pack solo, whereas the weaker rider would almost certainly be unable to be. When the two reach the finish line, I assume they would be reasonably well-matched for a sprint, just for the sake of providing a simple example.
In reality, it’s rarely so clear. But if someone knows that cooperating and getting second place is a better result for them in practice than fighting tooth and nail for first and potentially throwing it all away, they’ll make this kind of offer. Likewise if the other cyclist strongly values first place but thinks it’s too risky to cooperate with someone who might be try to snatch victory away at the finish line with a sprint, they’ll be relieved to hear the other person give this offer. Making this offer and reneging is considered poor sportsmanship, and it rarely happens because (presumably) racers expect that doing so will prevent them from being trusted to cooperate in the future.
A similar hierarchy can be made for a stronger rider in a stage race who has a time preference (over points) and who therefore grants the stage win: granting without an explicit deal is a better investment in future cooperation prospects than an explicit deal (because it can influence all future co-breakists), an explicit deal is preferable to coming in second due to being weaker, which is still greatly preferable to getting caught by the chasers.
You're right that this happens mostly in stage races, but it definitely happens in single-stage races too! If a rider is trying to get a category upgrade—say to Cat 1—they might make this offer knowing that it will help them get over the threshold even if they don't get first. Especially if they know they need these points in the next few races, they might make this deal rather than take the risk of not getting enough to qualify.