XDS-Astana continue their strong start to the season with Christian Scaroni hitting the jackpot at the weekend, with a bit of help from the Bahrain team who towed him to the finish of Stage 1 of the Tour des Alpes-Maritimes, the day after he’d shown his uphill kick by winning the Classic Var. He’s his team’s top points scorer so far.
As the chart shows the Sino-Kazkakh team are close to overtaking Uno-X and Arkéa-B&B Hotels in part thanks to Scaroni but 20 riders have scored UCI points. The real target is getting above the red line and past Cofidis. Or PicNic-PostNL which ought to be scoring more but we’ve said that for two seasons already. Intermarché-Wanty are still winless – all World Tour teams now have a win except them and Alpecin-Deceuninck – and with few points either and if this continues they could be relegation candidates soon too.
Is the system working? Partly, certainly it’s prompted XDS-Astana to race like there’s no tomorrow and that’s proving lively to watch. Meanwhile weaker teams will be relegated but perhaps the wiser but more elusive outcome would be a World Tour with fewer teams, say 15 or 16 and where the other teams like Cofidis, Intermarché or Arkéa-B&B, sit in a pool from which more invitations can be given. But this is reverse-engineering today’s situation onto a a system set in place years ago of course.
Talking of invitations, still no news on the wildcards for the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France. It’s particularly late for the Giro which is just 70 days away now. Normally they are unveiled in January but 2022 was an exception when we had to wait until 28 February for the news for the Giro. We could well go past that. It seems both the Tour and Giro organisers would like an invite an extra team, to have 23 squads rather than 22 as this solves their dilemma of not leaving anyone out but this requires UCI approval. The probable concern for the UCI is one of precedent as the issues facing organisers today will be similar in 2026 too, exclude a team this year or next year could sink them.
Another thing that requires UCI approval is One Cycling. Part fantasy upon which nice things can be projected (think of the talk about creating a new broadcasting app à la GCN), part nightmare (imagine races are held on motor-racing circuits where fans, if any appear, are asked to buy entry tickets), it’s still quite the blank canvas but some kind of validation from the UCI is required before – or if – it is officially unveiled this spring. It does feel like the launch is perpetually tomorrow… but it is getting closer.
Staying with the UCI, yesterday saw a flurry of reports that the European Parliament has passed a resolution calling on cycling’s governing body not to hold the Worlds in Kigali “if Rwanda does not change course” when it comes to backing the M23 militia and its combat operations in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. This resolution is sincere but was passed on 13 February, only few noticed and it’s taken two weeks to generate headlines. The UCI is structurally built resist political interference, it is for member federations to decide so don’t expect the governing body to change course on this news. But once again it is shining a spotlight on the Kagame government, you are now reading another paragraph about the Rwandan government supporting a militia that has killed thousands this year.
Back to trivial tattle and the Cauberg returns as the Amstel Gold Race finish. Since 2017 the race has finished via a shortcut after the Bemelerberg through the apple orchards. But now it’ll tackle the Cauberg in the finish. The climb is 1,500m long and 4.7% but with steeper earlier sections maxing at 12% on the way up before the flat run to the line. It’ll be interesting to see if we get a return to the old formula of riders waiting for the uphill sprint or if this collective memory is forgotten and today’s calorie-consumption means more lively racing rather than the waiting games of old.
Look closely and what do you see? A racing car, sure. But the small detail is a missing Ineos logo on the air intake. The Mercedes Formula 1 team has had to say outright that they’re working with Ineos in the wake of the British company pulling out of several sports sponsorships of late and because of the vanishing logo. First came the sponsorship spat New Zealand Rugby, now the end of a deal with London football club Tottenham reports the BBC. Ineos is a network of companies but the core business is petrochemicals. Thanks to Jim Ratcliffe’s partial takeover of Manchester United he and his network of Ineos companies are getting a lot more scrutiny. Britain’s Guardian newspaper has looked at the recent shrinking profits and widening losses of some of the Ineos companies for example. But this relies on looking back at accounts from previous years. Gas prices today in Europe are double what they were a year ago and with interest rates higher too it’s likely the financial stress has worsened. Could cuts come to cycling? Ineos still make millions and Ratcliffe himself has a vast personal fortune. So the question is simply whether he wants to: a whim rather than financial logic. What’s notable is how Ratcliffe made his fortune buying unloved industries and cost-cutting and is now spending it in a highly visible arena where costs are par for the course.
Having paid tribute to Jacques Augendre for his nostalgia and catalogue of Tour de France history, a line from one of his colleagues on the Tour de France stuck in the mind: “the best Tour is the next one“, it’s from Philippe Sudres who has run communications for the race. Both Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard had a successful weekend with wins in the UAE Tour and Algarve. Pogačar’s win was inevitable, his team is motivated more than any other while Vingegaard’s win thanks to the final time trial was encouraging but feel free to pick your adjective. It’s this degree of separation that makes their future clashes more interesting. They’ll meet at the Critérium du Dauphiné and then at the Tour and the anticipation of what might happen in July is part of the enjoyment, one encounter in June might tell us something but equally we can imagine there is time to change things, rather than seeing a pattern if they’d clashed every week or every month from here to July and beyond.
Before then there’s plenty to look forward to. Starting with Openingsweekend to borrow the parochial term from Belgian cycling. 3 on the Beaufort scale is a light breeze, insufficient for crosswinds and the forecast says it’ll be very cold and dry for the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, the kind of weather where gloves are the big choice of the day for riders and spectators like.
Lastly from cold hands to hot. Got one of those battery-powered pumps that fit in a pocket? If not chances are someone on a group ride does and they offer it up in case of a puncture. Using those ultralight polyurethane inner tubes, either to ride with daily or as weight-saving spare in your pocket or pouch? The combo is risky as the pump heats up…. and melts the plastic valve stem. It’s tempting to say the moral of the story is use an ordinary pump and tube but at least watch out with the heat from any device.
Lappartient again shows that he is as free of principles as all of his predecessors.
His latest interview with CN reeks of white saviour complex as he tells us how good this is for Africa (because like so many of these people, he basically regards Africa as a country), while ignoring the mass murder of ‘Africans’.
Makes you wonder if money is involved, and how much.
With a plethora of vile regimes and companies sponsoring or owning cycling teams, One Cycling lurking in the background, and people in the UK and Ireland having to pay £30 a month to see races, preluding what is likely to come to other countries, are those who for years complained that cycling desperately needed more money to come into the sport still so sure of that?
It’s less Lappartient and more structural. The UCI takes its cues from IOC, of which it is a member. The IOC isn’t a club that approves or disapproves of members, after all North Korea competes at the Olympics etc. So the IOC or UCI can’t or won’t eject or exclude a country like Rwanda until there is some kind of clear invasion which is a breach of their “Truce”, but for now supplying a militia gives Kigali a degree of deniability. But along comes the “Streisand effect” and more people will be noticing.
A principled person would take a stand; a politician wouldn’t (because their only interest is their own career).
People are responsible for the decisions bodies/companies/governments take. We are incessantly told otherwise (by those people).
If we’re worrying about cycling associating itself indirectly with thousands of deaths, via participants and/or organisers, well there is a certain that literally is promoting a state currently judged to be plausibly engaged in genodical – which surely will in (lengthy) time be decided to be actual genocide.
Absolutely. And as well as Israel, Saudi Arabia have killed over 400,000 people in Yemen.
And yet if Iran or Russia were sponsoring cycling teams, everyone from the centre to the far-right would be up in arms, as instructed by their governments.
A certain “team”, was that the missing word? A problem here is you might be thinking of one squad but it could equally be another, given the UAE’s support for the RSF in Sudan, more so since the team’s backer is not some wealthy hobbyist but the country’s spy chief.
However a request to stick to the cycling-related aspects of all this rather than try to solve Middle-Eastern and East African geopolitics, as it’ll be simpler to close the comments.
Well, it is this blog that brought in the geo-political aspect. I’m not making any determinations here (I refer to the /objective/ fact of a preliminary ruling from the world’s highest court and the authority on the subject, which – given the well documented facts, given prior rulings, and ignoring the potential of interference and pressure – will carry to a final ruling) on how cycling should interact.
I’m just pointing out there are double standards here. Driven by the fact that the western nations consider some mass murders to be tickety-boo when done by their friends.
The cycling question would be whether the UCI should also engage in such hypocrisy?
“world’s highest court”
There is no such thing as a “world court”, except perhaps in the fever dreams of these so-called “world judges”. What they believe amounts to squat. They are a baldly political body masquerading as jurists.
As credible as Cuba or Iran serving on the UN “human rights council”. It requires suspension of disbelief.
Your last sentence would have been more credible itself if the pair taken as an example was, say, “USA or Iran”.
@gabriele – since the current UN Human Rights Council started in 2006, the USA and Cuba have simultaneously been members in 2010-12, 2014-15, 2017-18 (until the USA withdrew) and 2022-24.
The USA’s membership of the 2017-19 group was far from the worst selection of that group, given others included Egypt, Rwanda, South Africa, Communist China, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Cuba.
Iran has never been a member if the UNHRC.
@DaveRides
(Sorry inrng, not bringing the debate any further, just trying to make my previews short take a little clearer)
I have no issues about whatever countries being part of any UN council, at the same time or not. That’s how UN work and I respect it, as long as, of course, everybody is aware that it’s not the only, main or most effective tool which humans can recur to in order to change or improve things.
My observation was exclusively related to the comment I answered to, i.e. that Tom’s point criticising the presence of some countries in the council was moot or tarnished by a taste of hypocrisy as, quite manifestly, he himself followed a pretty much ideological pattern when singling out the “prototype” of countries which, according to him, shouldn’t sit there. He’d have been more credible if his argument (which I don’t agree with) about how pure you should be to work on a subject had noticed that same sort of flaw more broadly across the geopolitical and ideological spectrum.
The debate on human rights, their classification, how different countries stress different groups (“generations”, using a term quite debatable in itself) of those in order to self-justify themselves, how their supposed importance is used as a mere ideological means to worse ends, how some NGOs and even worse foundations or think-tanks use the argument to push some very specific geopolitical even military agenda etc., well *all the above and more* is precisely what I promised I wouldn’t delve further into, so I won’t ^____^
Back to cycling please or the comments close to prevent a geopolitics bar fight.
I’m not sure why the Cauberg is back. Better VIP experiences in Valkenberg? Because I don’t think it adds to the race. The current formula works well I think. The finishes have all been exiting since MvDP’s stunning comeback.
It’s not clear. The race is still run by Leo van Vliet but now part of Flanders Classics for the first time so I wonder if they have a say. As you suggest, it can be because of the VIP moments but also the crowds who will get more to see, the “shortcut” of recent years cut out the big crowds for the last lap.
Ouch. Flanders Classics. So that’s why they decided to sell exclusive rights for Italy to Discovery+/ES.
Uff, IMHO another jump straight into suicide.
In Italy the Ronde has been collecting steadily some 800K in terms of average single viewers, despite the general relative decline in spectators experienced by all or most sports on TV.
2022, I think, hit the 1M mark, which was close to the 2018-2019 peaks at 1.1-1.3M.
(Single editions in Italy are affected by the date of Easter and other sport events which may or may not compete with the cycling race).
All in all, I think it’s not too far from the mark to say that the Ronde will lose all of a sudden some 10% of its global audience (pay-tv in Italy is still marginal).
To understand what’s the meaning of 0.8 to 1.2 M viewers for the Ronde, one just need to take into account that the all-time historical audience record *in Belgium* was 1.3M.
Ok, turn the whole potential of mass figures (a potential you need to turn into value, of course, which implies a degree of hard work, admittedly…) into simply squeezin’ money from a niche. Or, better said, selling a third party the right to try to squeeze that money. Good managing of the sport.
What’s worse, audience figures aside, is that it’s a blow to the stability of the fanbase in a core country and to the main narrative actually structuring cycling’s calendar, i.e., 5 Monuments, 3 GTs, Worlds.
Fragmenting, fragmenting and fragmenting again. The issue doens’t lie at all in how the sport has the athletes managing their calendar. It’s about how the sport tends to sell itself, trying to replicate from other sports what… it is definitely *not*.
Inrng revealing a bit of personal experience in that last comment on the battery pump?
I can’t imagine having to think about another battery to charge just to go for a bike ride. But then these days I ride a steel framed bike with canti brakes and nice comfy tyres. I’m possibly not the main audience for that tech.
However, the increasing number of batteries in our lives could have a real impact on bike riders. We see e-bikes and scooters banned from some trains and airlines, and even mini power packs being banned from planes for fear of fire. Adding yet more poorly regulated over heating batteries to our lives seems to overly complicate things in terms of how we travel with our bikes and equipment. It also seems hard to resolve.
Glad to hear you have tires as a concession to modernity 😉
Think we’re not far away from bikes, maybe gravel first, going back a dynamo in order to charge a central battery that powers the onboard computer, electronic gear shifting and doubles as a battery pack for phones and other devices.
As for the inflators, saw it personally and then read up on it and it seems a thing that’s happened to several people. It’s not so much the battery overheating but the motor which has to compress the air and the more the pressure rises in the tire, the hotter it gets.
“.. not far away from bikes, maybe gravel first, going back a dynamo …”
yes, but will serious cyclists tolerate 10-20 Watts of their power being diverted to an onboard generator/dynamo? 😉
Tyres are a small concession. And I must say I’m getting fed up of flipping my rear wheel around every time I come to a hill…
Happy to see the return of the dynamo, actually. Makes a lot of sense for those not too bothered by watts (or not bothered at all).
Thanks for the tip, I was recently gifted one of these devices so I will be sure to watch it carefully. I sort of agree about the plethora of battery powered devices although lighting technology for one is so much better now and I do much prefer chargable lights.
Have seen the melted plastic valve on a TPU tube before.
Most decent battery pumps come supplied with an extension specifically to prevent damage (Topeak E-Booster for instance), whereas others, it is available as an optional extra. Avoid the ones with no option or stick to a traditional mini pump IMHO.
I bought a couple of the electric pumps after reading glowing reports online. Mine came with a short rubber extension hose which is to be used for any non metal valve stems. Also, I found some TPU tubes on Ali express that have metal valve stems.
Yes – the advice in the instructions I got with my electric pump is to use the short rubber hose if using with a TPU tube. I believe ride now tubes now have metal valve stems and removable cores rather than bonded!
Seems Arkea got a little bonus in the Etoile de Bessèges with all the larger teams pulling out. Astana must be a little aggrieved having skipped that race, only to find points were easy to come by.
As a comment about the busy previous week, and empty current week, do you think the UCI calendar reform for 2026 will improve the spacing and flow of racing throughout the year? Do you think it feasible to schedule races every day from February to September, with perhaps some exceptions at Worlds and National Champs time, while reducing race overlap? Would reducing race overlap help teams and viewers? Would it improve race course design by encouraging the best courses be used?
JS your post went the wrong way of the spam filter. It’s online here now and here’s the reply…
It’s hard to know what the calendar reform will really look like. Ending overlapping World Tour races sounds feasible and initially it sounds like a good idea but it’s more complicated when you look into it, take Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico where the second race exists for the reason that more riders wanted a stage race just before the spring classics so you risk stopping this, in short solve one problem and you risk creating another. It’s bound to create winners and losers, the thing to observe is who will gain and who will lose out.
See https://inrng.com/2024/02/on-calendar-reform/ from a year ago for longer thoughts on this
The other problem with moving dates is that the dates are agreed with local/national government. And these people often have particular reasons for wanting to keep their dates in the calendar. And moreover, local interest may not be easily transferable to another time of year. A good example of this, is the original “sixth monument”, the Championship of Zurich, died when it got moved to the autumn.
Sudres quoting Hikmet?
Apparently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEd1cHZIgjc
I saw the news about Ineos + NZ All Blacks a few weeks ago and thought I would see it coming up in this blog before too long, so was glad to see it mentioned.
In January this year Ineos cycling team announced they were looking for a second title sponsor, which indicates to me the sponsorship from Ineos is less than before. I would be interested to know what state the teams finances are in, as they maybe don’t have the same pulling power anymore to attract new sponsors as they did back when they lost the Sky sponsorship.
Yes, I wonder about the “search for a co-sponsor” too because if you hired an agency to search for a replacement title sponsor you would not say this aloud. It looks like the budget is shrinking, we see Pidcock, Hayter, Narvaez leave and the arrivals presumably cost less. But Ineos have been one of the lead teams behind One Cycling and so there could be particular reasons to continue and be part of the proposed franchise system for 2026 and beyond.
One Cycling seems to have a better rationale for existence than the European “Super League” in football, but it’s interesting that both Manchester United and Ineos have been associated with those efforts. It appears that approaching sport with a “pure business” approach is not good for performance, which presumably would also be bad for the brand. In my years of observing the business of sport it almost always goes better when winning is the main objective, although cycling has a murkier path to profitability than many other sports.
Worth noting for the sake of accuracy that the European Super League controversy and Manchester United’s withdrawal from it came nearly three years before Ineos Sport bought their minority stake in the club.
Yeah, I was aware of that, but thanks for the clarification just in case anyone can’t check google for themselves
Perhaps less of a surprise that Ineos are no longer sponsoring Spurs. It would be odd for them to be supporting one of Man Utd’s premiership rivals.
Ah yes, Ineos and Spurs. What’s the opposite of the “Midas Touch?”
No idea, but I’m sure you might find it somewhere on the INEOS Compass!
https://www.ineos.com/about/the-ineos-compass/
The situation with Mercedes-AMG F1 is that Mercedes-Benz Group, Toto Wolff (mediocre Formula 3 driver and successful businessman) and Ineos are each 1/3 owners of the team.
The three owners don’t get any branding rights for that, if they want to have branding they have to pay for sponsorship as a separate matter to their 1/3 ownership.
Unlike the cycling team, partial ownership of a very successful (they win races even in their off years) F1 team is very profitable for Ineos Sport.
How does the current F1 model work?
I had a modest interest years ago which got reduced to checking some viewing figures from time to time, but currently I have no idea about how they’re structuring the whole thing (who pays whom etc.). Are circuits are paying the managing company to hold the events, I guess? Is the same managing company collecting TV rights? Where do the teams sit? Do they own totally or partially the managing company? Or they don’t but do they get shares of the latter’s incomes anyway? Etc.
Race promoters pay Formula One Management (FOM) for the right to host a Grand Prix.
FOM also gets money from TV rights and global sponsors.
FOM pays out roughly half of its revenue to the teams. These payments have one component which is an equal distribution to each team, a merit component which is effectively the previous season’s prize money, and a merit component based on performance over the previous five and ten year periods.
FOM has to pay a licensing fee for the rights to the championship, which is the largest source of revenue for the FIA.
Thanks a lot.
What percentage of a F1 team’s revenues would you estimate to be FOM payments, approximatedly?
The difference between what F1 teams and cycling teams currently collect *from direct sponsorships of the team* is relevant, but not a whole magnitude – I think the average is like 1,5x to 2x or so – especially as the total budget of WT teams went up a reported 33% since 2022.
Which is surprisingly good for cycling team, I’d say.
What’s huge is the difference in turnover, because in that case it’s more like 10x on average.
Prizes are huge in F1, I’ve seen, and they account for some 20% of Mercedes’ revenues, even a higher percentage for other teams.
Who’s paying them, race promoters?
I’ve also read (but I dunno if it’s trustworthy) that revenues skyrocketed since 2018, especially after a cost cap introduced in 2021. Couldn’t say if it’s true or makes sense, even.
At first sight, it looks like they’re being able to squeeze a lot of money from race promoters in different forms.
I don’t know elsewhere, but in Italy the mere fee is entirely paid by public money and it’s some 20M to 25M for each GP every year.
Public money also pay some further 10M in Monza’s case (dunno Imola) for organisational activities which aren’t provided by the F1 structure. All in all, the Italian state “loses” every year some 10-12M to have Monza. Maybe it even makes sense, but truth is that the money is being paid for political reasons, there’s no debate, the State pays through several public institutions, full stop.
I guess that GPs in countries like India were even more expensive for the host country, and I doubt they paid themselves better than Monza does.
To have a term of comparison, the ESPN superdeal for TV rights was worth 75M to 90M (it’s called superdeal because before that TV rights for the USA market were sold at 5M/year…).
They had a bonanza in Italy when RAI was paying up to 100M… luckily those times ended when the F1 went to Sky, even if now Liberty apparently looks open to a deal with RAI again (for less money, I hope) as the audience dropped heavily once the sport wasn’t on national TV for free anymore.
I couldn’t say about the rest of the world, in Italy (and in Spain) F1’s business model is mainly about strong personal connection of some specific sponsors with the political decision makers, which on turn opens great plundering rights on public funds (not that cycling works much differently, only on a way smaller scale! Plus, in cycling’s case the connection is more direct between public administrations and the sport, whereas in F1 case is rather about big companies, often former State companies, with a huge influence on political power).
“The difference between what F1 teams and cycling teams currently collect *from direct sponsorships of the team* is relevant, but not a whole magnitude – I think the average is like 1,5x to 2x or so – especially as the total budget of WT teams went up a reported 33% since 2022.
Which is surprisingly good for cycling team, I’d say.”
Top performing F1 teams have to be careful with how they handle sponsorship – they are well aware that plastering their cars with so many sponsors that nobody can see the livery results in the value of their brand (and therefore their value to a new or renewing sponsor) actually decreasing.
I also suspect that teams are targeting sponsorships that provide services in kind, as a way of manipulating their accounting for the partial spending cap.
“Prizes are huge in F1, I’ve seen, and they account for some 20% of Mercedes’ revenues, even a higher percentage for other teams.
Who’s paying them, race promoters?”
The prizes are paid by FOM, awarded for each team’s position in the previous year’s World Constructors Championship standings. Race results only carry medals and trophies, and the World Drivers Champion only gets a trophy.
Details are commercial in confidence, but the last credible estimate I saw had the 2024 payments (i.e. payments resulting from 2023 FOM revenue, being paid to teams for 2023 performance) being about USD 76 million per team as a minimum (i.e. what HAAS F1 got for coming in 10th/last place) and going up to about USD 177 million for the champion team Red Bull Racing.
“I’ve also read (but I dunno if it’s trustworthy) that revenues skyrocketed since 2018, especially after a cost cap introduced in 2021. Couldn’t say if it’s true or makes sense, even.”
F1 revenue has increased at a phenomenal rate since Liberty Media took majority ownership in 2017, which results in the FOM payments to team increasing proportionally.
The partial spending cap (it only covers certain areas) has been good for improving the net revenue/loss position of some teams. For a couple of teams, it hasn’t made a difference because they were not previously spending more than the cap.
The spending cap has also had a number of other unexpected effects. Working for a F1 team typically carries lower pay than equivalent roles in other motorsport (if the role is covered by the spending cap – pay for F1 drivers and the top 5 paid other staff in uncapped) or the automotive industry. Ferrari had to shift a bunch of engineers off the F1 program but couldn’t make them redundant under Italian labour law, so they put them to work on a Hypercar category program for the World Endurance Championship which has won the last two 24 Hours of Le Mans the last two years and took a 1-2-3 finish in last night’s 10 hour race to open the new season.
I gave a quick look to Mercedes AMG figures from 2023 I think (usual delay between data and publication) and they’ve got a huge turnover (top F1 team in that sense), a whole magnitude above top cycling teams (which one has to expect given how intrinsically expensive is it to run a F1 team when compared to cycling), but surprisingly (for me) sponsorships account for a relatively small part of that, some very rough 20% or so, whereas in cycling it’s obviously well above 90%, normally.
They’re quite profitable indeed (surely more than a cycling team), if they had a single owner he or she could run a top cycling team out of F1’s profit only ^___^
So, I’m left asking myself where the money comes from… 😉
(No, I won’t look deeper into their accounting figures, just hoping that more knowledgeable people might be willing to share…)
I read somewhere that Ineos made $100M from F1 in 2023.
Mmm sounds more likely to me that’s the team whole profit, whose share for Ineos should be 1/3 of the amount. But, as I said above, other commenters probably know better.
It was definitely just Ineos’s share
Your sources definitely struggled with reading a public financial report, then.
https://www.si.com/fannation/racing/f1briefings/news/mercedes-f1-news-team-reaches-staggering-milestone-despite-performance-struggles-lm22
Or… it can’t be pure chance that the whole profit of the team sits around $100M, me thinks (some 83M pounds). Your source somewhere simply omitted the division into three parts.
I see a name from pro-cycling’s murky past is being mentioned again, Rabobank.
Of all the sports to sponor, I would have thought that pro-cycling would be far down on their list.
Why exactly?
Or… do you really think they were unaware of what was happening when they sponsored for the first time?
They left saying that doping was so rampant that it was “no longer convinced the international professional world of cycling can make this a clean and fair sport”.
Wow, cool for somebody starting their sponsorship in 1996… and who didn’t quit after every sort of cases of organised, top-bottom doping had involved their own team through the years, including (among many others) those damning admissions by Koerts in 2007 or 2008 I think after which – feel assured – they didn’t send home Leinders, either.
It sounds more like that as Sky hired Leinders in 2011, I believe, at Rabobank they understood that a new era was about start, especially after seeing Wiggo win the TDF in July 2012, so in October they left because the system didn’t offer much space, indeed, if you wanted to keep a winning profile… in 2007-2011 they were still winning/podiuming GTs, scandals or not, so they hadn’t left, after all; then from 2012 (included) onward their set of objectives became more like trying hard to podium (at best) in short stage races, while not even hitting anymore a final top 5 in GTs, despite having the same talented riders, several of whom were even entering their age prime.
Things only started to shift slowly in 2016, an economically and politically very important year also for the sponsor they had got the year before… but that’s the beginning of another story.
Back to when Rabobank left, seriously, how can anyone believe that the factor was any repulsion toward doping (they hadn’t left after every sort of doping scandal) and not the fact that they became aware that under the new conditions of the sport a winning profile wouldn’t be available for them in the short term (they suddenly fell down a step or two… and they left)?
The whole Leinders thing is much much telling, I believe.
I think the cycling staff and riders who were there at the coal-face as the doping was occurring (and perhaps even were involved themselves directly), a number of whom _remain_ in this team to this day, are the ones we should point fingers at.
The title sponsor did not do it.
I don’t know about the specific case, but in cycling the title sponsor used to be often setting the bar of the results to achieve, then got a feedback from the staff about the level of practices possibly required, and many times gave green light.
In this very specific case, as I explained, the sponsor knew perfectly (it was essentially… public) what happened at their team, time after time, and never walked away.
Then, when it became clear that they were going to be unable to go on gathering the same level of results, only then, they walked away claiming it was, of course, “because of doping in the sport”. Come on, it was blatant.
But – no need to say – make of it what you wish…
It’s like Germany make a national scandal of Ullrich’s doping when it was managed and carried out through public universities. Yeah, nobody knew, even if people had been going on record saying “we need to show the other side what we can do” or the likes.
By the way, Italy was just the same, but I surely won’t pretend that nobody in any decision-making position was aware of it…
This is simply not true. I’ve never – in any of the many doping scandals in cycling in the late 90s to mid 00’s – heard of corporate title sponsors going into teams and telling them they needed to dope.
The doping in cycling came from the cycling people. It was bad and awful. There’s no need to invent nonsense around it – though I can understand why some in cycling, and lovers of the sport, might want to try find outside parties to shift the blame onto.
If you read gabriele´s comments as an attempt to “find outside parties to shift the blame onto” made by “a lover of the sport”- and you certainly seem to have done so- I think you are quite mistaken.
I don’t know.. I’m largely going by gabriele’s first sentence, which summarises to: “Sponsor sets expectations, staff say , sponsor gives ‘green light'”.
When did the latter 2 clauses of that sentence occur?
It was the staff and riders who decided to dope, and they did so. And they did so cause they wanted to win and they believed everyone was doing so, and they would have done it – and did – regardless of the sponsors.
well maybe because the name “Rabobank” is just as connected to the doping area as the disgusting “Gianetti” at UAE. Some persons and companies should just keep away from the sport.
Can’t say if you’re answering to me because of the reply visual structure, anyway my question was why cycling should be far down on *their* list, not why fans should or may welcome or not their return. As their name is already doping-related, they actually have little to lose and much to gain from a comeback. Unless they get caught again next season or so
^____^
One Cycling – will be interesting if the proposals change the tiering system. Would be spicy if Astana’s scattergun tactics do get them above the red line, but for nought
My prediction is the One-Cycling will amount to a few small races that nobody much will care about. The problem they have is that for the races to run, they require the support of national/local government. And they don’t seem to realise that these are the key decision makers about things like TV contracts and road closures. Neither the French nor the Italian government is going to close their roads for the Saudi-s and Plugge to make money.
Unless they are paid.
What do you expect? Saudi jornou sawing sheik project taking over cycling and the UCI quit next year so there is no World Tour anymore for Astan to be part of? Ridiculous.
Some news from NL: Rabobank are coming back. They’re going to come back as a sponsor of Visma – Lease a bike.
That’s an interesting development. For all the grumblings around Pogacar’s success and the UAE Team management’s sketchy background, Visma – Lease a Bike bring one of the most nefarious corporate doping enablers in modern cycling back into the fold. Hmmm.
Uhm, it wasn’t the title sponsor doing the doping. It was the cycling staff and riders in the team. A number of whom remain with the team to this day. Rabobank left _because_ of the doping.
They left because of _anti-doping_. The Armstrong ban made cycling seem dirtier, despite that period being the slowest since wide-spread EPO. Now they are faster than Riis and Pantani, and as no one gets caught, sponsors can return.
Are we entering a “too big to fail” period? Too many people, making a good living and eager to keep the gravy train rolling?
WADA doing deals with “alleged dopers” who have the financial resources now to get teams of lawyers and experts to provide fanciful explainations.
Doping has been part of the sport since the bicycle was invented. It’s the hypocrisy and PR bs that makes it ludicrous.
@robmd
…entering…? 😉