'The safety of our riders can never be a political game' - Richard Plugge on Visma, OneCycling and the safety debate

It never really stops for Richard Plugge and his Visma | Lease a Bike team. Simon Yates’ Giro d’Italia victory was quickly followed by Jonas Vingegaard’s second place at the Tour de France. Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s Tour de France Femmes win has barely been consigned to the books and now Vingegaard is back in action at the Vuelta a España as the overwhelming favourite.

On Thursday, Vingegaard revealed that he would miss the World Championships in Rwanda, and the Dane will face inevitable criticism about his reluctance to race on as varied terrain as Tadej Pogacar.

Plugge pushes back against the idea. “I'm curious about how many race days other riders have had, so let’s then debate if they race enough or not,” he tells Domestique. “We made the choice with Jonas to do two Grand Tours this year. That’s a choice and that means a big workload. A Grand Tour is a big, big thing to do…”

Domestique: Before the Tour de France, Jonas Vingegaard said every Tour to that point had either been a real victory or a moral victory for him – so how did he greet this year’s second place compared to the others? And how did you see it as a team?

Richard Plugge: I don’t know 100% how he experienced it, so you should ask him. But we experienced it as a really good result. Until the end, we tried to get the best result and tried to win it. And I think we inspired many fans by the way we raced and tried. 

I think for Jonas, there was maybe one less good day, let’s put it that way. And that’s where we lost a bit a little bit too much time maybe, but that’s something to discuss for next year to see where we can improve. But we were very far ahead of the rest of the competition and so we can only be proud of coming second and winning two stages, and we can be proud of the way we raced all together.

From the outside, we compare everything Visma do to 2023, which might be unfair, but that’s where the bar has been set. The Tour de France inevitably colours everybody’s perception, but how do you see Visma’s season to this point? 

So far, I think we cannot complain, but let’s evaluate after the season. But I like that people compare us with our 2023 season. We want to be the number one team. We want to be the best team in the world. So that means also that there are fans and journalists and whoever who putting a lot of pressure on us. But, like I think Billie Jean King said, the pressure is a privilege.

If nobody expects anything of you, that means that you don’t play a role in the sport, and we’d like to play a big role. We want to be the number one. We put maybe the most pressure on ourselves internally. I’m not so worried about criticism from the outside. I’m listening and working with the inside criticism.

Visma are having a fine season, but UAE Team Emirates-XRG are in another league in terms of the volume and variety of their wins. The depth of their roster is very evident and that has a lot to do with their budget. Is that a fundamental problem for you or simply a challenge? 

I think you would have expected this answer, but I see it as a challenge. We’ve never been the number one team budget-wise. First, we had Ineos and now it’s UAE, and there are also some other teams above us. Even in 2023, we were maybe only fifth or sixth in the budget ranking, so it’s not only about budget, of course.

For us, it’s a challenge to beat the big money teams. And yeah, there are more coming up. For us, it’s a matter of beating them and I don’t think it’s a big problem for the sport or whatever.

We all have to work hard, whether you have a low-budget team or high-budget team. Everyone has to work hard because it’s a high-performance environment. Even with a big budget, you cannot sit back and relax and let it come to you. The people of UAE are also working crazy hard and making crazy hours to make sure that they come to the point where they are today. 

UAE’s dominance is bringing up old discussions about salary caps and budget caps. But we’ve seen in football, for instance, that financial fair play rules are fine in theory but hard to apply in practice…

Well, I think that’s a different discussion, but I think it is really like you said: it’s really, really hard to enforce.

There are so many flaws possible in such a system. You see it in Formula One. You see it in football, like you just mentioned, and you see it in other sports. So you know you should have a closed system first, a system where the money from the whole system flows towards all the players.

You can only have a budget cap or whatever system if we as teams also share in the income out of the sport – that is, out of the TV and media rights, out of the sponsorship for organisers, but also out of the sponsorship of a series or the WorldTour, the income of the WorldTour itself.

Only if it’s a closed economic system like that can you then discuss having a budget cap. As things stand, if you have a budget cap, you punish teams. The team is my company, and every company wants to have the biggest income. But if we are in one system with the organisers and the riders and the governing body, then we can all share the uplift or upsell, which then stays in the sport.

If it’s supposedly good for organisers to have a more level playing field between teams, and if they can earn more money because of that, then let’s share that extra money. The teams are happy to do that, probably. But first we have to have one closed system, all together. So let’s work on that.

What you are describing sounds a lot like the OneCycling project, which the UCI came out strongly against in June. What can you tell us about the project now?

There’s nothing to tell. I just outline how it should be and how every professional sport in the world is organised, financially and economically. And this isn’t about making my team richer but about becoming more economically sustainable for the future.

And it’s not only about the teams; it’s also about the organisers, the riders and probably the governing body getting more finances available to them.

That’s what should happen, and it has nothing to do with whatever project, but that’s the vision I have already had for 15 years. Let’s say that today we have two systems next to each other – it’s kind of the teams and the riders on the one end, and the organisers on the other end, and they don’t work together in any way. It’s two separate systems. And that’s what you should combine, in my opinion, to grow the income and the revenue of the organisers, but also of the teams and ultimately the riders. So that’s how I see it.

Regardless of whether it’s called OneCycling or not, is this idea still possible? 

Yeah, of course it is possible. And of course it’s needed, because we’re all fans of cycling and that’s nice, but ultimately cycling is losing ground towards other sports like Formula One and football.

In the United States, pro cycling is almost gone. I mean, this is one of the biggest economies in  the world and pro cycling is very hard to follow in in the States. And so, you know, if you want to grow this sport, if you want to keep up with the competition – and by the competition, I mean other sports. You have to act, and either we act ourselves or it will be done to us, in that some other sports will take our position and we end up sitting looking at each other and saying, ‘Hey, we should have acted 10 years ago, but now it’s too late.’

Are you optimistic about this changing? 

Sure, I’m 100% an optimistic person.

Speaking of people being on the same page, we saw a situation at Tour de Romandie Féminin where the teams and the UCI were pulling against one another. The specific debate was about safety and trackers on bikes, but it was hard not to feel like the standoff between the UCI and the teams was about something more than that.

I think everyone is very much behind creating more safety. All the teams, everyone, is very open to every real safety measure, especially when it comes to working together in one system to create real safety.

You know, 70% of all the crashes are caused by the race environment, so let’s look into the low hanging fruit, which is there, and that’s where the SafeR concept came from. It came from me and Ineos. The idea was to put up an independent organisation, where politics would not play a role at all anymore. It was to be an independent organisation, looking after the safety of our riders in the first place and of our sport in the second place. 

But after I left as a president of the AIGCP, I have to concluded that it has become a political thing, it’s not an independent organisation anymore. It’s a working group kind of thing where everyone has a say and, as we say in Dutch, we leave the church in the middle instead of instead of making hard decisions, either towards teams, riders or organisations.

I think that’s really needed to safeguard the vision of cycling, because every crash is damaging to our sport. If there’s a big crash in a bunch sprint at the Tour de France, where everyone is watching, it’s not only damaging the Tour de France, it’s damaging to our whole sport.

Of course, it’s very bad for the riders above all, so let’s start with that. But it’s also damaging the image of our sport. That’s what I’m very worried about and that’s what it’s all about: stop playing political games, but just act and give people a real independent organisation who really looks after the safety of our riders.

To play devil’s advocate, but the whole Romandie standoff was damaging to the image of the sport. I can understand the principle, but in practical terms was it worth it to miss the race?

No, of course not. And you know we asked them [the UCI] to name a rider and they can put the device on themselves. We asked them to give us one name to have the device on her bike. And they refused to do that. And then suddenly we were disqualified. I was on holidays, so I missed most of it, but it happened, and I was very surprised with that. 

What does this do for the relationship between teams and the UCI going forward? Was this a one-off episode or is it something that’s going to recur and create similar problems in the future?

I don’t know. I have good contact with David [Lappartient] and we will speak eventually. My relationship with him is not at all hurt or whatever. I look forward to meeting him and seeing what was happening here. Let’s discuss it and ask why did this happen and how did this happen – but, above all, how can we get better safety for our riders?

We have so many devices already that can give you tracking, if it’s about finding people. The Garmin on our bikes gives you a location if you a crash. So it’s not about that, and I’m curious about what it was about.

From the outside, it all looked more about politics than safety…

I don’t know. I will ask. Because I was on holidays and I was really out of contact for a couple of days, so it was only afterwards that I saw what happened. I was very curious. If it’s politics, then it makes me really sad because the safety of our people, our riders, our girls, our boys can never be a political game, in my opinion.

The UCI is planning to test restricted gears at the Tour of Guangxi, but will that still go ahead?

I hope that that one is not going ahead, because I can tell you that on these wide roads in China, there will be no crash. If you are going to do a test, then you have to do a proper test with a good procedure. If people do not crash, then the test will be deemed to be positive…

Well, you know, none of my riders crashed in the Tour de France, so by that logic, I can say now already say that we raced with the 10-cog in the Tour de France and it was very positive because we did not crash, and we can race with it because it’s safe. But that’s a nonsense argument too. 

So yeah, let’s have a good procedure and test protocol in place first before we can say anything about it. 

Is it possible that teams would refuse to comply with that requirement for restricted gears or even refuse to race? 

We want to follow this test and, of course, we want to help make cycling better, but let’s discuss the whole protocol first, the test protocols. Let’s first put a proper procedure and protocol in place and then look at this. That’s why I’m saying I hope it doesn’t happen in Guangxi, because at this moment, it’s not at all a scientific test.