It’s not exactly breaking news: a pretty famous athlete gets a Richard Mille and wears it during competition. Rafa Nadal has been doing that for as long as I can remember, and some American football player broke a rule and wore a Richard Mille during a game, I think, and racing drivers have been wearing Richard Milles forever, and so on. So the Swiss watch brand found another player to sport a cool ultralight and ultra-expensive watch in competition. No big deal.
But it struck me as a big deal anyways, because for the longest time the relationship between cycling and watches has been nearly non-existent. Back in the day you didn’t see Bartali or Eddy Merckx sporting a watch or a Swiss endorsement. Hinault or Hincappe, no. Even the endorsement-heavy Lance Armstrong didn’t land anything from a watch company. It shows an incredible lack of imagination, really. Over the years Tissot has flirted with cycling as a timekeeper. The unremarkable Festina brand back in the 1990s had a cycling team that kicked some ass in the mountains. More recently, Tudor sponsors an eponymous team with Swiss cycling champion Fabien Cancellara as director. But on the whole, cycling and watches have not really consummated their relationship.
As a formerly competitive road cyclist, I have always wondered why. I used to wear my Oris Big Crown on race days back in the 1990s, its fate predictably about as good as my face during that dreadful crash when a toddler waltzed onto the road and wiped everyone out. And therein may lay the most interesting – that is to say, risky – part of putting a Richard Mille on a professional cyclists wrist: these people will crash spectacularly, and if the ground-down crystal, bezel and crown of my Oris Big Crown is any indication of what could happen to van der Poel’s quarter-million-dollar RM 67-02 Automatic Extra Flat, then this could be a pretty expensive collaboration. I think it’s awesome.
What if that Richard Mille RM 67-02 Crashes?
A part of me that wants to see that watch be dragged across the pavement at 60mph. Yes, as twisted as it sounds for a grown man to say it, I’d like to see a quarter-million-dollars of precision-crafted carbon fiber and titanium ground into a nubby pulp, and maybe some of that white carbon will leave chalky mark on the tarmac. Why is the possibility of that very expensive watch getting destroyed so compelling?
I don’t actually want that to happen, of course, but I do savor the fact that it could happen. The reason is that there is just good old high-stakes risk involved. Nadal could take an overhead slam from Medvedev straight to the Richard Mille on his wrist, but I don’t think anything would happen to the watch in tennis. Formula 1 seems like an all or nothing kind of situation, and I’m not convinced that they actually wear the watches (do they?). But on van der Poel that watch is exposed, just as are the bodies of cyclists, practically naked, travelling at ridiculous speeds in packs of feisty riders known to wipe out in a rainbow of blood-soaked spandex. That watch is really out there, taking the risks of the sport along with van der Poel. It’s just exciting.
Richard Mille and van der Poel Are a Great Match
Van der Poel is part of a generation of cyclists restoring dignity to the sport. There are at least five exceptional riders right now, and five is a lot. Tadje Pogačar, Wout van Aert, Jonas Vingegaard, Primož Roglič, and van der Poel could each win just about any race, from a one-day classic to one of the grand tours. It’s amazing to not know who is going to win a race. After years of cycling seeming more or less like a drug-addled mess, this generation seems to have taken nutrition and athletic science past what illegal drugs can do for a rider. Maybe I’m naive, but anyone who has raced knows that when you get your recovery and food intake just right you can fly on the bike; that’s a sophisticated science now, tailored daily for each rider, and it’s all legal and wholesome.
This is a great moment for Richard Mille to partner with a cyclist, and van der Poel is a great partner. They’re doing it right, with a really expensive RM 67-02 Automatic Extra Flat. I think the price is important for two reasons: on the one hand, let these kids be super rich stars, they’ve earned it; and on the other hand, even if van der Poel doesn’t go down with that watch on his wrist, we all know that he and Richard Mille are willing to put that watch into one of the most compellingly dangerous athletic environments in the world. Risk and bravery and sacrifice and ultralight high-tech inventions, this is the formula for competitive cycling. Go get ’em Matthieu.