Notes From the Beach
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The Never-Ending Story
I was walking the dog after Sunday’s cyclocross world championships and thinking of what to say about it, eventually imagining what it’s like to cover the sport for a living in the Era of Matti and Wout. “Hey, Jumbo Visma PR director, I am thinking of doing a feature on Wout Van Aert’s rivalry with Mathieu van der Poel, could I get 15 minutes of his time?” And then I think that pot has been legalized just in the nick of time.
Is this rivalry killing the sport? No, but it is definitely killing cycling media. Not only is everyone sick of talking about the rivalry, we are now getting sick of stories about how we are sick of talking about the rivalry. There is nothing left to say about the two on that big picture level.