Did Highroad ever have a sponsor?

There’s an air of the obituary across newspapers, cycling news websites and fellow blogs. Everyone’s lamenting the announcement that the Highroad team could not find a replacement sponsor for HTC to keep the team going into 2012 and beyond. And many are asking aloud why such a good team could not find a replacement sponsor.

But one answer is that they never had sponsorship in place since the day the team started.

Read more

The Highroad that comes to an end

“After an exhaustive search to secure long term sponsorship we have concluded that it’s time to release our team members to pursue other options” That’s HTC-Highroad’s team boss Bob Stapleton. I’m travelling right now with a shaky internet connection so can’t cover the topic in detail but the team will fold at the end of … Read more

Red faces for Green Edge?

The Australian headline

Stuey has wanted to be a part of this project since we first went public with wanting to put a team at the Tour de France, back in Adelaide last January… …We’ll be rolling out more big-name signings in the days and weeks ahead.

That’s the headline screengrab plus a quote from an article in The Australian, the biggest selling-newspaper Down Under. Only it seems to be premature at best.

Read more

Merger mania

Merger / takeover

Companies usually merge to strengthen their position with the idea that 1+1 = something greater than two, perhaps because they can assume a dominant position in their market. Think of Exxon and Mobil joining to make the biggest oil company in the world or Air France and KLM joining forces to match European rivals like Lufthansa.

Now in cycling we are seeing mergers between teams only this time it’s for quite different reasons. Rather than growth or dominance, this looks more like a story of survival. More like half a team plus a few more riders hopefully makes up a whole team.

Read more

The transfer season is open

Deal time

2.15.120 A transfer period extends from 1 August to 20 October. A UCI ProTeam or licence applicant may only recruit riders during the transfer period… …For the purposes of this article “recruit” shall be deemed to mean concluding a contract with a rider to ride for the UCI ProTeam or licence applicant’s team, including situations where the rider in question is already under contract to the same UCI ProTeam or licence applicant at the moment of that recruitment, e.g. in the case of the renewal of an existing contract.

Today is the start of the transfer season and the paragraph above is the relevant UCI rule. Read the first line and you’d think things can only happen from today onwards but look twice and you’ll soon notice the wording that says “‘recruit’ shall be deemed to mean concluding a contract” and that the obvious conclusion to a contract is signing it. In other words a rider and a team can talk any time they like, they can discuss pay, the recruitment of other riders and more. All so long as they don’t “conclude” the contract, in other words they can settle all the terms of the deal and wait for 1 August to ink it.

Read more