It’s always a little uncomfortable to tell professionals in the cycling world that they’re “doing it wrong”. After all, I can sit here with limited talent and no experience and say pretty much anything I want and face no repercussions—I don’t even have to worry about offending a sponsor or future stonewalling from press agents.

That said, Garmin-Cervelo is doing it wrong.

It doesn’t have much to do with their Flanders performance. The squad has taken an inordinate amount of heat for a radio conversation that at the time made plenty of tactical sense. In fact, it even turned out to be the winning decision, just for another team—and that’s kind of my point.

There are times—generally a non-GC stage after the first mountain/time trial battle of the Tour de France—where I’ll concede that cycling isn’t the most exciting sport in the world. But races like this year’s Tour of Flanders make the few days that drag entirely worthwhile.

While there were countless things to love, for me, the most memorable aspect of yesterday was how many situations arose in which the race could have realistically been “over”.

Despite—and in many ways, because of—my immersion in American culture, I am well aware of its many dislikable aspects. Conspicuous consumption. An increasingly embarrassing income gap. The wholesale embrace of opinion without the discomfort of thought on both ends of the political spectrum. But what I simply do not understand is profound toxicity of the American brand in the upper echelons of European cycling.

I get the fatigue aspect—seven Tour wins, the cynics, the comeback, chair you’re sitting on, etc. Anyone who denies a touch of eye glaze around 2004 or so clearly isn’t a cycling fan. But time after time, when one European cycling group seeks to discredit another, the American card is one of the first played.