The end of a great era came 10 August 2007 when Tailwind Sports announced that they will not continue managing a ProTour cycling team. Tailwind Sports and Lance Armstrong were co-owners of sorts of the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team, and prior to that, the United States Postal Service Cycling Team.
Back in the good old days, Motorola and 7-Eleven were the title sponsors of basically the same team. Management was different, but the core cyclist stayed together.
Has doping, and allegations of doping, really brought professional road cycling to the point that top teams can no longer find a sponsor? Or was Tailwind Sports just asking for too much of a commitment from the sponsor ($45 million for 3 years)? Maybe a combination of both.
Graham Watson said it best, in this excerpt from his website, grahamwatson.com:
"It seems ironic after such a difficult Tour, that a victorious team like Discovery is packing it in, while others such as T-Mobile, Astana, Cofidis and Rabobank are set to continue for a few years more at least, despite their obvious problems."
Aside from Ivan Basso, who wasn't doping while a member of Team Discovery, no one ever tested positive. Astana and Cofidis had to abandon the tour because of positive tests, and Rabobank sent home the leader of the Tour de France, Michael Rasmussen, not because he tested positive, but because he didn't adhere to the rules.
Even now, as the team folds, allegations of doping by current Tour de France champion Alberto Contador, a member of the Discovery Channel Team, hang over them. And will anyone ever believe that Lance Armstrong won a record 7 Tours de France in a row clean?
I think Lance did and here's why. Because in the history of the sport, no one has ever dedicated their career to just winning one race. Lance trained and rode to only win the Tour de France. Everyone before him rode to win everything. The great Eddy Merckx won the Tour de France 5 times. But he also won the Giro d'Italia 5 times, the Vuelta Espana once, and too many spring classics to list here including World Champion three times.
Did Lance ever ride the Giro? Sure he won the Worlds, but that was before cancer, before he went after the tour. When Lance went on his winning streak, he was only riding for one reason, to win the Tour de France. Any other wins (Dauphine Libere, or the Tour de Suisse) were only training.
Johan Bruyneel, the Director Sportif is also retiring from the sport. He's not sad about it. In his way, he knew this day would come. But for some of us, that day has come to soon.
Now the torch of top American cycling squad is to be passed on. Johnathan Vaughters, a former member of the United States Postal cycling team, is bringing in an a new upstart squad, Team Slipstream ("powered by Chipotle," hate that part of the name) into a fuller European cycling season. Similar to 7-Eleven back in the 80's, just a bunch of young punks from the U.S. barging in on the sport. They are starting to hire some big guns (David Millar, Julian Dean, Magnus Backstedt), but do they have the financial backing to play with the big boys in the UCI?
Do I root for them? Depends... I didn't like their jersey design this year, hopefully they step it up next year. Maybe I'll root for T-Mobile, the embattled team that's been around forever. George Hincapie seems happy to shift to them, perhaps, I will follow George.
But for now, my heart remains with Team Discovery. They will finish out the year and then pack up their bikes and clothes and quietly go off into the sunset. On top.
Sad really.
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