{"id":734273,"date":"2026-02-01T02:17:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T02:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/734273\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T02:17:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T02:17:11","slug":"the-teams-are-abusing-these-athletes-its-abuse-british-cycling-veteran-unsurprised-by-simon-yates-retirement-amid-claims-of-unhealthy-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/734273\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe teams are abusing these athletes; it\u2019s abuse\u201d \u2013 British cycling veteran unsurprised by Simon Yates retirement amid claims of \u2018unhealthy\u2019 sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

For Smith, the issue is not one rider\u2019s motivation. It is the system around him. \u201cIt\u2019s pressure, pressure, pressure the whole time, and some people just say that\u2019s enough. What did Pogacar say at the Tour de France? He\u2019s not doing the Vuelta, and there was talk of one word: burnout. Burnout. They\u2019re racing 80 days a year \u2013 in my day we raced 120.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no place to hide now\u201dThe retirement of Simon Yates<\/a> has already prompted wide discussion inside the sport. The defending Giro champion stepped away with immediate effect on 7 January, citing a loss of motivation, then disappeared entirely from public view. Reports emerged that he had blocked cycling accounts on social media. Rumours of burnout spread quickly.<\/p>\n

Smith sees a clear pattern. \u201cBut there\u2019s no place to hide now. I can totally understand it. The teams are abusing these athletes; it\u2019s abuse. They\u2019re looking at riders as Formula One cars.\u201d<\/p>\n

That comparison is deliberate. Riders, in his view, are treated as machines to be optimised, marginal gain after marginal gain, with little regard for what happens when the system finally overloads.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny tweaks they can do to help performance, they\u2019ll do it irreverent of whether the car crashes, is it going to save the life of the driver? They\u2019re probably not thinking about that. They\u2019re just thinking about performance and speeds.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is where Yates\u2019 story intersects with a broader trend. In recent seasons, several high-profile riders have spoken openly about exhaustion, mental strain and the difficulty of sustaining elite performance inside increasingly data-driven, tightly controlled team environments.<\/p>\n

Burnout is no longer a taboo word<\/p>\n

Smith also pointed to the comments of Tadej Pogacar, who publicly ruled out riding the Vuelta last summer amid suggestions of burnout after an intense campaign. That word, once rarely used in cycling circles, is now common in interviews and press conferences.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bike riders don\u2019t help themselves either,\u201d Smith added. \u201cI think most bike riders think like, if you do this training, have this diet, and take these supplements or don\u2019t take these supplements, and then you\u2019ll have health problems down the line, they don\u2019t care, especially the youngsters. And they\u2019re relying on their teams to look after them.\u201d<\/p>\n

That reliance, Smith argues, is precisely where the danger lies. \u201cAnd cycling, at the top end of our sport, is not healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n

A context that suddenly makes senseInside Team Visma | Lease a Bike<\/a>, Yates\u2019 departure left a visible gap in plans for 2026. It also came amid growing conversation about rider workload, condensed calendars, altitude camps, long stints away from home and the psychological cost of constant performance pressure.<\/p>\n

Seen through Smith\u2019s lens, the timing of Yates\u2019 decision becomes less mysterious.<\/p>\n

Not a rider losing motivation overnight. Not an isolated case. But an example of what happens when the demands of modern cycling collide with the limits of the individual.<\/p>\n

For Smith, the real surprise is not that Yates walked away.<\/p>\n

It is that more riders have not done the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For Smith, the issue is not one rider\u2019s motivation. It is the system around him. \u201cIt\u2019s pressure,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":734274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[217851,4230,81082,79,180916,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-734273","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-brian-smith","9":"tag-cycling","10":"tag-simon-yates","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-team-visma-lease-a-bike","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115992975313980982","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/734274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}