After Vincenzo Nibali dismissed Oleg Tinkov’s idea of all four of cycling’s best Grand Tour riders competing in all three Grand Tours in one season, Michael Rogers takes a different view, insisting that Oleg’s idea may be key to cycling remaining in the public eye.

“Cycling is a very traditional sport. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. We’re all very similar. … I think Oleg is cut from a completely different [cloth]. He sees things from a very, very different perspective that we’re probably not used to,” Rogers told VeloNews Friday morning. “I feel it comes along at the right time. I feel we need to change the sport. I feel we need to simplify. It needs a fresh voice, like Oleg’s. It’s pulling cycling out of its comfort zone. That’s probably the best way I can put it.”

Tinkov is indeed very different from the other team owners, posting pictures of himself on mega yachts where he says he will take over the UCI, he openly discusses rider contracts, citing that because he found cycling in Croatia so hard that he now would sign Robert Kiserlovski and that if he gained a number of retweets he would sign Peter Sagan. He is so radical that many people thought his Twitter account was fake.

“A lot of people have been upset about what he’s said, and the way he acts. I feel if we don’t change we’ll be pushed out of sport limelight,” Rogers, who won two Giro d’Italia stages and one stage at the Tour in Tinkoff’s yellow, said. Rogers cited this year’s Tour de France Grand Départ in England as a good example of going outside of cycling’s traditions.

“Just those three days in Britain. It’s just amazing. It’s time for the sport to really leverage that, and I feel the way that the sport has been administered by all parties in the past just isn’t going to cut it to really make the sport explode,” he said.

“… But it’s time for cycling to step out of its comfort zone and move forward and be open to these people who want to bring new energy in and a different approach.”