End of taking the High Road?

[ingsve]

True dat. Last winter Cavendish was practically begging for a new contract from Stapleton. But Stapleton played hardball and chicken and lost out.

Stapleton simply didn't have the money to give Cav the contract that Cav was demanding. You can't sign someone if you don't have the budget for it.

 

[Tuarts]

I think people are a little off the mark with their viewing on HTC and unattractive sprinting warding off sponsors. From a sponsor POV, having 7-8 riders all in a train on the front emblazoned with your company logo must look very good.

 

[robtclements]

From a sponsor POV, having 7-8 riders all in a train on the front emblazoned with your company logo must look very good.

If it did, the Highroad team would still exist. In reality, it seems to have to have had no marketable value at all

 

[MartinGT]

If it did, the Highroad team would still exist. In reality, it seems to have to have had no marketable value at all

Could it be the reason everyone who only watches the Tour see them as HTC? I.e not HTC Highroad?

 

[Angliru]

Sky will become the next boring team next year with Cav. The hate for Sky will increase.

With the Anglo cycling magazines becoming virtually Sky cycling monthly's, this month one devoting 15-20 pages to them alone, it's no wonder some fans could be growing tired of the undeserved focus. It's overkill. With the team's and riders of nationalities other than those that speak English virtually ignored, it seems what we're getting is a scratched record playing the same tune over and over (Sorry if this analogy fails for those born in the digital age ). If Cavendish does sign with Sky I can't imagine the extent that Team Sky will take over their content. I'd better prepare myself for utilizing
Google translate a lot in the future.

 

[Apollonius]

He's not going to Sky - rest easy.

 

[cycledp]

Really sad news, they might have made some races boring but any team with Cav would have to do that. A lot of people who deserve to be pro will have a tough time getting a new contract I guess.

I'm curious as to how well Cav will do next year. I don't think any other team will give him the support that HTC did. He's still a great sprinter and certainly has the talent to win sprints without as much support. I forget which stage win he had in this year's Tour de France (maybe stage 5?) that was without the regular support he usually gets that was really impressive. In my opinion he will still be a top sprinter but not as dominating without the train.

 

[Cobblestoned]

I'm curious as to how well Cav will do next year. I don't think any other team will give him the support that HTC did. He's still a great sprinter and certainly has the talent to win sprints without as much support. I forget which stage win he had in this year's Tour de France (maybe stage 5?) that was without the regular support he usually gets that was really impressive. In my opinion he will still be a top sprinter but not as dominating without the train.

Sky will deliver a nice train.
Business as usual.

Thomas, EBH, Swift, Henderson etc. + perhaps some riders Cav will take with him, like Renshaw.

 

[woodie]

He's not going to Sky - rest easy.

How do you know? You sound pretty certain

 

[Astana1]

Great. Another crybaby article about Cav. Why does he keep digging himself a deeper and deeper hole?

And people wonder why so many people find Cav so unappealing.

 

[Four Winds]

So HTC made sprint stages boring?

Yeah, it would have been a pretty good strategy for them to say "we've got the fastest man in the world with a 80-90% hit rate guaranteed when on form, but let's just lose as much as possible cos that's bound to be good for the sponsors and there are some folk on CyclingNews forum who don't like us winning very much."

And as for one trick ponies, well Rembrandt was a good painter but he was awful on the piano

 

[davestoller]

Great. Another crybaby article about Cav. Why does he keep digging himself a deeper and deeper hole?

No such thing as bad publicity.

And, cause that's who he is.

Guess his managers are going with it.

 

[MartinGT]

The questions are, who can afford Cav and give him the assurances of competing for Green and also for next year a strong possability of leaving the Tour early for the Olympics?

 

[Damiano Machiavelli]

Inner Ring theorizes that High Road was coasting on the T-Mobile payout for its entire existence and sponsors never paid in enough to operate the team.

http://inrng.com/2011/08/highroad-pro-cycling/#more-4525

 

[cycledp]

So HTC made sprint stages boring?

Yeah, it would have been a pretty good strategy for them to say "we've got the fastest man in the world with a 80-90% hit rate guaranteed when on form, but let's just lose as much as possible cos that's bound to be good for the sponsors and there are some folk on CyclingNews forum who don't like us winning very much."

And as for one trick ponies, well Rembrandt was a good painter but he was awful on the piano

Winning as many stages as they did didn't help with sponsors either, did it? No one cared to watch because HTC/Stapleton made the sprints so boring. Who wants to sponsor a team like that when no one is watching? No one, obviously. That's why they had to fold.

 

[LugHugger]

Inner Ring theorizes that High Road was coasting on the T-Mobile payout for its entire existence and sponsors never paid in enough to operate the team.

http://inrng.com/2011/08/highroad-pro-cycling/#more-4525

I'm guessing this is very close to the mark. Thanks for posting.

 

[ingsve]

No such thing as bad publicity.

And, cause that's who he is.

Guess his managers are going with it.

Well, if it's a strategy at this point to feed into that image then he shouldn't be crying about people criticizing and disliking him.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Why the hate for Sky? Maybe the subject for another thread, but the pro-team returned to Planet Earth this year and done quite well so far, in lots of races. Please explain?

Here in the UK I see what a great investment they are making in cycling at all levels - the city centre Sky rides, the Sky Ride Schools programme, plus the sponsoship of the national track team. All good.

If Cav is signing for Sky, great - with him and Bradley it will be like Lewis Hanilton and Jensen Button at McLaren - some tension, but some great racing. Bring it on.

Big shame about THC though - I hope the womens team continues.

You make the assumption that we're all British, and we all think that "doing well in a few races = likable". HTC did VERY well in a LOT of races, but I loathe them. Sky do some good things, but given the amount of self-serving garbage the cycling press served up when the team started, with week after week of Team Sky press releases dressed up as journalism, then exactly as Angliru mentions (as I quoted below), it's going to be overkill.

I think I can count the "great racing" I've seen involving Cavendish on one hand. 2009 stage to Aubenas, Milan-San Remo 2009, and that Tour stage Greipel outsprinted him on. Any advance on that?

If it did, the Highroad team would still exist. In reality, it seems to have to have had no marketable value at all

I think it has plenty of marketable value. The problem is that Cavendish likely won't be there; maybe his being there was conditional on the sponsor, and the sponsor was conditional on Cav - and neither blinked. It's no good having a long train if you aren't going to win; they've now lost the best sprinter in the world and their best GC talent (Velits).

The other problem of course is, who was Stapleton trying to sell to? People like Unzué found new sponsors, but Unzué has a comparatively homogeneous team. He can sell his team as a Spanish team. He may not get a big global sponsor but he can consolidate by selling to the Spanish companies. Stapleton's team were too big to keep going at their current level, and their cosmopolitan nature and high budget was a boon when they were in line, but when you come to have to replace that shortfall, sometimes you have to swallow your pride and downsize, or you're going to fall by the wayside.

Stapleton also complained about the big corporate teams pricing people out of the sport; he should know, it's one of the ideas he used himself. The problem with it is, now there are teams doing the same thing but with more money behind them (BMC, for example), and Stapleton can no longer compete. But because he hasn't got that solid base that people like Unzué have had, he can't fall back on selling at that level.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

With the Anglo cycling magazines becoming virtually Sky cycling monthly's, this month one devoting 15-20 pages to them alone, it's no wonder some fans could be growing tired of the undeserved focus. It's overkill. With the team's and riders of nationalities other than those that speak English virtually ignored, it seems what we're getting is a scratched record playing the same tune over and over (Sorry if this analogy fails for those born in the digital age ). If Cavendish does sign with Sky I can't imagine the extent that Team Sky will take over their content. I'd better prepare myself for utilizing
Google translate a lot in the future.

Very, very good point.

So HTC made sprint stages boring?

Yeah, it would have been a pretty good strategy for them to say "we've got the fastest man in the world with a 80-90% hit rate guaranteed when on form, but let's just lose as much as possible cos that's bound to be good for the sponsors and there are some folk on CyclingNews forum who don't like us winning very much."

We're not saying that they shouldn't have gone for those wins. We're saying it was boring.

This isn't pro wrestling, it's a genuine athletic competition, and of course you'll want to maximise the amount of wins. But it turns people off. Zomegnan was turning his routes into carnivals of climbing partly in response to the criticism that his flatter routes got from fans, and partly because they found that the audience figures for flat stages at the Giro were chronically low in comparison to intermediate, mountain and even time trial stages.

 

[Mambo95]

With the Anglo cycling magazines becoming virtually Sky cycling monthly's, this month one devoting 15-20 pages to them alone, it's no wonder some fans could be growing tired of the undeserved focus. It's overkill. With the team's and riders of nationalities other than those that speak English virtually ignored, it seems what we're getting is a scratched record playing the same tune over and over (Sorry if this analogy fails for those born in the digital age ). If Cavendish does sign with Sky I can't imagine the extent that Team Sky will take over their content. I'd better prepare myself for utilizing
Google translate a lot in the future.

You're over exaggerating the amount of Sky in the magazines, I think. It's only to be expected that they would get more coverage than any other team, but it's not overkill.

Here's what the latest (post Tour) edition of Cycle Sport is:

Pages
6-7 Contents
8-13 Big Photos (nice one of Hivert, none show Sky)
14-15 General post Tour article
16-17 David Millar
18 KOM, Green Jersey comment
20 A bit about nationalities at the Tour
22 Comment about riders in their mid 30s
24 Who won what money
26 Top 10 funny moments
28 Geraint Thomas column
30-31 Letters
34-44 General Tour review
46-52 Cadel Evans
54-58 Andy Schleck
60-65 Phil Gilbert
66-70 Garmin TTT
72-76 Team Sky
78-82 Thor Hushovd
84-85 Pedro Horrillo
86-93 Breakaways/FdJ
94-99 Ivan Basso
100-102 Agents
104-106 What happens at the back of the peloton
110-116 Basque fans
118-119 Picture montage (no Sky)
120-123 Publicity caravan
124-127 JJ Rojas
128-133 Photo feature (small photos of Swift and Flecha)
134-135 Time limits (Galimzyanov mostly)
136-145 Plateau de Beille
146-149 Graham Watson (no Sky photos)
150-153 New products
158-160 Broomwagon

So that's six pages devoted to Sky, less than the amount devoted to Basque fans - hardly overkill.

 

[goggalor]

If Cavendish does sign with Sky I can't imagine the extent that Team Sky will take over their content. I'd better prepare myself for utilizing
Google translate a lot in the future.

Think Spice Girls.

Whingy Spice

Skinny Spice

Spanish Spice

 

[Aleajactaest]

Stapleton also said that all parties they were talking with as possible sponsors brought up the Armstrong and Contador cases which makes investors cautions eventhough High Road had nothing to do with those cases.

Mostly a load of crap. If that was the cause, SaxoBank and RS/Trek/Nissan would certainly have run for the hills and yet, they did not.

No, this was a billionaire who wasn't willing to do what he asked of others and they all knew it. He was crap as a DS and they knew it. A team is useless without funding and he had no clue how to get it.

 

[Ragerod]

Mostly a load of crap. If that was the cause, SaxoBank and RS/Trek/Nissan would certainly have run for the hills and yet, they did not.

No, this was a billionaire who wasn't willing to do what he asked of others and they all knew it. He was crap as a DS and they knew it. A team is useless without funding and he had no clue how to get it.

You know this from attending all of the negotiations that took place right?

Forbes estimates his worth at approximately $80 million which doesn't make him a billionaire and every sponsor is different and has different goals. SaxoBank and Radioshack could put more importance on brand awareness than brand image compared to Highroad's potential sponsors.

Besides, the Contador case is recent and solely relevant to this year's sponsors and the amount of allegations and investigations involving Armstrong have escalated during the past couple of years. Therefore the circumstances for new sponsors this year are different and should be treated as such.

 

[Polish]

Stapleton also said that all parties they were talking with as possible sponsors brought up the Armstrong and Contador cases which makes investors cautions eventhough High Road had nothing to do with those cases.

Maybe the potential investors were asking if Alberto or Lance was on the Team?

If HTC had Alberto and/or Lance on their Team, the potential investors would be fighting to outbid one another to gain sponsorship lol.

You know that is true, don't you?
Ask SaxoBank/Specialized/Sunguard/Nissan/Radioshack/Twitter/Trek/etcetcetc.

 

[ingsve]

Mostly a load of crap. If that was the cause, SaxoBank and RS/Trek/Nissan would certainly have run for the hills and yet, they did not.

No, this was a billionaire who wasn't willing to do what he asked of others and they all knew it. He was crap as a DS and they knew it. A team is useless without funding and he had no clue how to get it.

Well, perhaps Riis and Bruyneel are better at explaining away the doping in a way that fools the sponsors and that Stapleton simply wasn't as good at bull****ting.