Matt White, Jayco AlUla's director of racing, has said Eddie Dunbar has proven himself the "perfect example" of a "Moneyball" rider with his performances this year given the way he was signed by the team. The Australian added the Irishman would have the support of the team in his bid to get the best result possible at La Vuelta, while also riding alongside young riders being blooded at the Spanish Grand Tour.
White explained pro cycling had changed so significantly in recent years that he was now sitting down with riders aged 17 or 18 years, with their parents, and mapping out a plan for developing them as riders and people inside his team. He said even in the recent past he would not have been able to "fathom" the changes.
While more and more very young riders would be given the chance to turn pro, as the more teams opted for youth, it would also result in a much higher number of cyclists seeing their pro careers end in their early 20s - with a high turnover of teenagers and those in their early 20s being churned in and out of the pro peloton.
Advertisement
Against that backdrop, and with the large sums of money now being offered to neo pros by the richest teams in the sport, White said his team had to be cleverer and find other ways of securing the talent it needed to compete as a lower budget squad.
Speaking to The Cycling Podcast, White agreed that some teams effectively had to opt for the Moneyball concept; a way of seeking value in usual places, or by signing those riders with star talent not valued by their current teams.
Related News
Moneyball was a system devised in baseball to identify the key skills needed by a team and then matching those needs to players based on their data. The Moneyball system - and the movie of the same name - is based on effectively looking beyond the hype around athletes. Instead, teams identified at core skills or abilities overlooked or undervalued by other teams, and then maximised that potential in a new environment, without incurring big transfer fees or salaries.
"With a team like ours, that's where the Moneyball system comes into place," said White. "We haven't got the budget where we can just go around and sweep up the best young kids based on their data. And that's like throwing eggs at a wall. isn't it? If you throw 10 eggs at a wall, and you can afford to do that, and two of them don't crack, you've got two superstars.
"But teams with budgets that are a little bit smaller than others can't afford to waste the money on those talents. We have to do our due diligence at an even higher level than the teams that have money. And a place we can, and do, look is that the biggest teams. At the end of the day, if you look at the biggest teams in the world and the amount of budget that they have, and the amount of opportunity that some of their (riders) don't get, they're the ones you come in and swoop up from the side.
"And what we can offer is something that other World Tour teams can't offer, and that's leadership in certain races. And the perfect example for us this year has been Eddie Dunbar. He's a rider who couldn't make the roster of a Grand Tour on a team like Ineos and he comes to us and on the first chance he runs a very, very respectable ride in the Giro d'Italia in just his second Grand Tour ever. So that's where we've also got to look; at people who are not getting opportunities in the big teams."
White added cycling was now going the way of pro football and he believed all World Tour teams would have academies in the next few years. These would scout for very young talent and be used to bring those teenagers in the teams' set-up and into their culture very early. And by working with riders from a very young age, it meant teams had the best chance to weigh up the athletes in terms of both their sporting potential and their potential to slot into the team culture.
