Yesterday, Welsh cyclist Geraint Thomas won the 2018 Tour de France, the world's most prestigious professional bicycling race. For those of you who don't know much about professional bicycle road racing (or for those of you who are too young to remember American cyclist Lance Armstrong, who won an unprecedented 7 Tour de France races in a row from 1999-2005, the most ever in history, before being stripped of all 7 victories for admitting to doping), the Tour de France is a grueling, three week long, 21 stage race around the country of France that covers over 2,200 miles. The race is extremely popular in Europe, though it is often overshadowed by other professional sports in the United States. Aside from Lance Armstrong and Floyd Landis (whose 2006 Tour de France victory was similarly taken away because he tested positive for performance enhancing drugs), only one American has ever won the Tour de France - Greg LeMond won the race in 1986, 1989, and 1990.
The Tour de France is unique because, while an individual is named the winner, professional road bicycle racing is very much a team sport. A cycling team generally consists of a captain (usually the individual who is the best overall rider and therefore has the best chance of winning the race), different specialists (climbing specialist, sprinters, and time trialists), and the so-called domestiques, who are essentially professional workhorses who do whatever is necessary to help the captain win the race. Domestiques are the riders that you see carrying food bags and water bottles from the team vans that drive in the back of the pack (the peloton) to all of the cyclists on the team. If someone on the team has a flat tire, the domestique stays back with the rider (and in some cases, the domestique may be asked to give up his bike to the other rider, depending on the situation) while the team mechanics quickly change the flat tire. Once the tire is changed, the rider "drafts" behind the domestique to catch back up to the peloton. The domestiques are often used in tactical situations to help the captain stay up in front of the peloton or even win the race.
What is so unique about this year's Tour is that Geraint Thomas started out his career as one of the so-called super-domestiques (the captain of all the domestiques, if you will) for riders Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome when they won the Tour in past years. Four-time Tour de France winner, Chris Froome, in fact, served as the super-domestique for eventual champion Bradley Wiggins in 2012 (Froome finished second in the overall standings that year). One of my earliest Tour de France memories, in fact, was the 1985 Tour de France, when Greg LeMond was serving as the super-domestique for five-time winner Bernard Hinault ("The Badger"). During one of the later stages of the race, Hinault, who had suffered significant injuries in a crash earlier in the race, was struggling to maintain his overall lead and had fallen far behind several riders, including LeMond. I particularly remember an exchange (which was televised) that LeMond had with one of the team managers, almost begging the manager to allow him to push hard to win the stage and wear the famed yellow jersey (the overall leader of the Tour de France gets to wear a yellow jersey) for a few days. The team manager felt that LeMond was in a position to win the overall race, but he made a controversial decision to give Hinault an opportunity to win his fifth Tour by telling LeMond to hold back! LeMond was clearly very frustrated, and following the Tour, Bernard Hinault promised that he would return in 1986 and serve as LeMond's super-domestique to help him win his first Tour. Hinault actually tried hard to win that race too, but LeMond still went on to win his first of three Tours, the first (and only) American to do so.
Domestiques do whatever it takes to help the team leader win the Tour de France. They have one mission only - help the team leader get (and stay) in a position to win. Just imagine if everyone on a team was trying their hardest to achieve one single mission! Surprisingly, and perhaps unfortunately, there are perhaps too many individuals acting like the 1986 Tour de France version of Bernard Hinault, when what is really needed is for individuals to be acting like the 1985 version of Greg LeMond. Success comes hard, but with teamwork, it can happen. We need more domestiques in our organizations! We need Tour de France leadership!
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