“How the Race Was Won,” Peter Cossins

Bike racing is “chess at 150 beats per minute” is a central thesis of Peter Cossins’ book “How the Race Was Won,” attempting to elevate the sport to a battle of brains as much as legs.  The chess comparisons run rampant with the final line of the book “like chess—at 400 watts.”  He elicits agreement from two of the principal voices in his book, Matt White, who orchestrates the Australian Mitchelton-Scott team, and Nicolas Portal, a former French rider who is one of the generals of Team Sky, though neither show any evidence of knowing anything about chess other than that it is a cerebral game where one must think ahead, an esteem they are happy to confer upon their sport.  Neither of them though, nor Cossins, make comparisons to specific pieces or gambits, not even referring to a team leader as a King who must be protected, or discussing versatile riders who can execute extraordinary feats, such as a Knight maneuvering around others.

As an examination of race strategy, the book argues there is much more to the sport than simply riding hard.  There is no disputing that, but to compare it to the intricate game of chess, where every game came permutate tens of thousands of ways, forcing one to continually strain his brain, is a fanciful, unjustified metaphor that ought to outrage any aficionado of the game.

Teejay Van Garderen, another prominent voice in the book, prefers to compare bicycling racing to boxing.  Rarely is there fisticuffs, just elbows thrown from time to time, but the crux of the sport is trying to knock out (drop) one’s adversaries, pounding and pounding on the pedals, wearing out those one is riding against, trying to make them give up, to succumb to the pummeling, forcing them to essentially quit, falling off the pace.

Joe Dombrowski, another American Cossins prevails upon to explain the sport, further undermines his premise that bicycle racing is a cerebral endeavor.  He says, “A lot of great bike riders are kinda stupid.  You know, having nothing going on up there, just primal instinct.”  When Cossins asks Van Garderen if he agreed, he laughed and said, “I think some of the best cyclists in the peloton aren’t very intelligent and I reckon that’s often to their advantage.” 

Cossins is far from the first to compare bicycle racing to chess.  It is an all too common analogy. As a lifelong fan of cycling who has been reporting on it going back to the 1994 Tour of Flanders and the author of several other books on the sport, he ought to know better than to resort to this tired, cliched comparison.  Despite his expertise, he admits to being “often clueless as to precisely how a rider has won a race.”  This book was an exercise of talking to the principals of the sport to find some answers.  

Some of those he consults give tiny clues, such as Thomas De Gendt, a Belgian breakaway artist who this fall gained great notoriety by biking cycle-tourist-style 600 miles back to Belgium after the Tour of Lombardie with his teammate Tim Wellens.  He reveals that one way to extend one’s lead in a breakaway is going extra hard through a feed zone, knowing that when the peloton passes through it will be slowing to pick up their musettes. Peter Van Petegem says one needs to be a “nasty bastard” throwing elbows and shoulders to maintain one’s position, especially in the Classics, to come out victorious.  Cossins takes from Laurent Fignon’s book that one must never grip the handlebars hard on the cobbles.  These are all tricks, not chess-like strategy, just as a Canadian national champion once told me that he always pushed a little harder with his left pedal because it was the side his heart was on, figuring there must be more blood on that side of his body.

A racing friend who knew I was reading this book, whose subtitle is “Cycling’s top minds reveal the road to victory,” said that as far as he was concerned the largest single factor to one’s success is the “size of his balls.”  Cossins doesn’t say that, but he does dwell considerably on one’s ability to suffer, which could be related to machismo. David Millar says it is better to dish out the suffering, setting the pace, than to have it dictated, being in arrears trying to keep up and wondering how much longer one can take it.  Van Garderen recommends that one try to pass the pain one is feeling on to others, to “make them suffer more than you are.”  Bradley Wiggins simply advises, “Just try and soak up the pain, not show it.”  There’s no secret to success here, just ploys to endure, getting into “the mind set of suffering,” as Van Garderen phrases it.

The stronger rider doesn’t always win, even in time trials, where there is a modicum of strategy—how to pace one’s self and knowing the course.  It is possible to outwit one’s rivals, or bluff that one is suffering more than one is or bluff that one is stronger than one happens to be.  Racing can be compared to poker, not only bluffing, but taking outrageous, unjustified risks.  Portal much prefers the calculated, chess approach.  

White credits Johan Bruyneel and the Postal Team, which he rode for with Lance Armstrong, for pioneering recon, making more than a token effort to scout a race route.  “They caught a lot of teams out,” White said, knowing when to attack.  

Try as he might, Cossins doesn’t unearth any great secrets, as it’s unlikely that riders or directors would reveal ploys known only to themselves that make them successful.  The temptation might be to divulge bogus advice, to lead others astray, such as Sky claiming that riding on the front in a single line instead of being in the pack keeps riders cooler, “preventing the body’s core temperature rising to a level that would produce an added drain on physical resources.”  It would seem that the added effort, not being fully entombed out of the wind, might increase the body’s core temperature.  Sky has long trumpeted “marginal gains” as their key to success, which Cossins scoffs at as a “smokescreen.”

The greatest secret to successs would seem to be training methods and nutrition.  Geraint Thomas has said one of the keys to his winning The Tour was having two training camps at altitude, rather than the usual one. Sky has invested two such camps in Froome in years past, but none this year as he recovered from riding the Giro.  If one is asking “How the race was won” as regards his Tour de France, the answer could well have been on Tenerife. Yet Cossins doesn’t comment at all on training or nutrition.  

Though the book may not be as thorough or as well-conceived as it could have been, it is still a worthwhile contribution to understanding the sport, rich in  tidbits that give insight into life in the peloton.  White revealed that he once listened to music on his headphones to help him survive an hour-long climb in the Giro.  One might be surprised to learn that Paris-Roubaix doesn’t always finish at the velodrome.  One of the rare years when it didn’t was 1988 when Dirk Demol, a director for Trek, won the race which concluded that year in front of the headquarters of the race sponsor La Redoubte. Cossins reveals that Phil Anderson, riding for Motorola, was the first rider to be equipped with a two-way radio, implanted in his helmet.