The Flemish Lion - Chicago, Illinois

The short answer for this question is Johan Bruyneel. Look in the dictionary under sport director and you’ll see his mug staring straight back at you. Though I’ve heard it said that great sport directors are just the ones with the greatest riders, they still have to assemble a good team of riders and sufficiently motivate them around one or more captains before they have a great team.

I’m sure there are quite a few more qualities than I will be able to remember here, but here are a few of them:

Amateur psychologist -- a good DS needs to be able to motivate his riders. In order to successfully accomplish that, he needs to listen to them and learn what each one needs to be motivated. José DeCauwer, for instance, learned that I was already hard enough on myself, so that any additional yelling on his part served only to de-motivate me. Yet I saw him have success with a raised voice around other guys on the team.

Before Greg LeMond’s light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel individual time trial stage in the 1989 Giro d’Italia, José let Greg tie fly-fishing flies in his hotel room until just shortly before the start. Greg was able to get his head into a good place and was, therefore, able to race well.

Having been a pretty decent time trial rider before the advent of aero bars, I started putting way too much pressure on myself before each and every time trial I rode, and started cracking under that pressure. José recognized this and refused to allow any of our team cars to follow me anymore.

“You’re making yourself so crazy for this,” he told me. “You have gotten to the point where the fastest you go is down the start ramp. I won’t follow you anymore. Here’s a pump and a spare.”

His words were not spoken as an insult to me, but rather as a calm reminder. After having not even found the third page of results for any time trial for more than a year or so, I ripped off a 10th place finish in a 5 km prologue while carrying a frame pump and a spare sew-up -- this was my first race without a follow car.

Body Language Expert -- Bike racers, unlike poker players, cannot hide their “tells” behind hats and sunglasses, because bike racers typically change their position on the bike as they physically get into “trouble.”

I have written about this before, and you can see Greg’s version of it here, but the short version goes like this: In the 1989 Tour de France, both Cyrille Guimard, Laurent Fignon’s director and José DeCauwer, Greg LeMond’s director, recognized that Greg was in deep difficulty on a climb. Since Greg was in yellow, José was in the first car and Guimard was in the second. (This was before the days of the in-ear radios) Guimard wanted to go up to Fignon and tell him to attack, knowing that Greg wouldn’t be able to follow the Frenchman’s acceleration. José, knowing this also, refused to let Guimard past -- to the point that the two cars exchanged more than a little paint. Finally, the chief commissaire forced José to let Guimard by, and Fignon attacked, but had either one of these two directors failed to understand Greg’s body language, the outcome of the ’89 Tour might have been different.

Rider’s advocate -- This is one of the easiest things to do, yet the one that too many directors and team managers don’t even come close to understanding. So for any of you would-be directors out there ... pay attention! THE RIDER IS ALWAYS RIGHT. It is as simple as that. The rider is always right. You need to listen to them and agree with them. Period. Elite athletes in any arena are frail creatures. Their lives and reputations are on the line all of the time. Plus, in cycling, they are staring down the barrel of pain and suffering before they start each new race. Think about that for a minute. Imagine going to work everyday, knowing that when you get there you are not only going to be experiencing the typical boredom and typical office politics, but physical pain ... for hours at a time.

In the last year of my cycling career, one of my teammates was Lisa Sher, an American downhiller. Like every top-level cyclist I have ever known, Lisa was very particular about her equipment and very, very nervous on race day. Our mechanic, while well-meaning, was a shop mechanic, not a race mechanic -- and there is a difference. He treated Lisa like a complaining customer and, unfortunately, the management sided with him instead of its race product. Lisa’s results were almost as terrible as my own.

Seeing as how her race day was my easy day, I started riding the chairlift to the start with her or even sometimes driving her to starts in one of the team vehicles. We talked about nothing in particular, but our conversations were always non-confrontational. I never told her she was wrong. I told her that she looked good in sections where she looked good, and didn’t talk at all about where she looked less than good. She began to compile some decent results. THE RIDER IS ALWAYS RIGHT ... even when they aren’t.

Tactician -- You remember the Robert Duvall surf scene in Apocalypse Now? You know, “Charlie don’t surf,” and all of that. When everyone else is ducking and covering from the incoming shells, Duvall’s character is standing there calmly, thinking about the waves, as if there is nothing exploding around him.

This clip is a bit graphic and not all that, err not at all PC, so view at your own discretion.



A good DS provides a calming influence, while at the same time, asking his riders to get on with the business of cycling. He asks his riders to actually race. He sometimes does some amazingly unorthodox things -- sometimes getting bit in the process. Most importantly though, he acts as if he is impervious to all mortal consequences. Think about it; would you attack if that Duvall character asked you to? I would.

Len Pettyjohn was probably the best director I have ever known in this capacity. Len exuded the confidence of the Duvall character in spades. He was, hands down, the most intelligent and thoughtful DS I have ever known and I never even began to question one of his orders.

Driver -- The driving skills of sport directors are often underestimated and completely misunderstood by a lot of people. I mean, how hard is it to drive a car at 20-60 mph all day long anyway? Well, apart from the sheer boredom of driving at that break-neck pace, and driving in close quarters with other lunatic directors and their lunatic riders, there are many other things to contend with.

A pro peloton can be an extremely quick-changing beast that can go from the team car’s fourth gear back to second gear in the blink of an eye, and then back to fourth again. Coming back from servicing a rider who has flatted, the team car might have to work its way through stragglers or any number of other moving obstacles before finding its rightful place again.

A good DS must possess perfect situational awareness too. He needs to be mindful of the riders around him who are coming back from any number of catastrophes, and allow those riders to covertly draft the team car. A director who forgets to do this will find that other directors will “forget” to help his riders back into the fold as well.

Oh, and if you do not like the sound of tires squealing or the sight and feel of bored, psycopath domestiques bouncing off your car simply for the fun of it ... you need not apply.

No Champions Allowed -- Have you ever noticed that great directors were not former superstars? Yep, Bruyneel, Guimard, DeCauwer, Madiot, Mike Neel, etc, etc ... these were all guys who were good riders but not absolute world-beaters. No, a good DS needs to have experienced the world of professional cycling through the eyes of his worker, not through multiple-time Tour de France champion's eyes.

The Buck Stops Here -- A good director, like a good supervisor, manager or CEO, always awards the victory to the great efforts of his riders and takes full responsibility for their failures. Enough said.