Jonathan Vaughters wants to see Tadej Pogacar ride for Cofidis

In an era where a relatively small group including Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard, and Mathieu van der Poel dominates cycling, the question of how to keep the sport exciting and engaging is increasingly asked. Jonathan Vaughters, the American team manager of EF Education-EasyPost and EF Education-Oatly, has his own perspective on this.

"I don’t know if Pogacar’s dominance is necessarily good for the sport, but it is interesting to consider how it could be," Vaughters believes.

His proposal? A 'salary cap system', a financial model that sets a maximum amount a team can spend on salaries, something already used in the American football league NFL. "Pogacar could still earn his 10 million euros per year, but the rest of the team would have to make do with minimum wages. It would be like Pogacar riding for Cofidis."

According to Vaughters, this would bring many benefits for the fans. "Then we’d have an exciting race and I’d be curious again who will win. Right now you have the strongest rider on the strongest team. That becomes predictable. You want a sport that’s not like that, where you don’t know who will win until the very last moment. That’s what the fans want."

"In Strade Bianche, you know every year where Pogacar is going to attack," Vaughters gives as an example. "Now imagine if his team couldn’t control the race and after his attack, he still has to chase back a breakaway of forty riders: that would become interesting again."