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IAM Cycling

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CheckMyPecs

CheckMyPecs

Mar 14, 2016
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A thread for discussing news about IAM Cycling.

They've won five races in the 2016 season so far. The highlight was Jérôme Coppel taking the ITT and the overall at the Étoile de Bessèges.

567592444_670.jpg
 
StryderHells

StryderHells

Oct 10, 2015
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Kokoso

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CheckMyPecs said:
A thread for discussing news about IAM Cycling.

They've won five races in the 2016 season so far. The highlight was Jérôme Coppel taking the ITT and the overall at the Étoile de Bessèges.

567592444_670.jpg
Click to expand...
Shame Coppel didn't stuck to cross country skiing. His cycling career is goog, though.
 
TMP402

TMP402

Mar 13, 2015
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The future of the IAM Cycling team will be decided in the next few days, with Swiss team owner Michel Thetaz set to explain his decision when he visits the Giro d'Italia for the final days of the race.

Thetaz has still to make a final decision on if he will continue to fund the team via his Independent Asset Management investment company, secure a co-sponsor to boost the team's budget or even quit the sport. The team stepped up to WorldTour level in 2015 but has struggled to compete in the biggest races, winning just 14 races in 2015 and five races so far this season.

On Thursday Italian television pundit Beppe Conte suggested that the IAM team could merge with BMC for the 2017 season. That rumour has been circulating for a while, with BMC owner Andy Rihs and Thetaz keen to create a Swiss WorldTour super team that could compete with the biggest teams in the sport.
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http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/iam-cyclings-future-to-be-decided-in-next-few-days/
 
May0maniac

May0maniac

Jun 30, 2014
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I don't get it, why wouldn't they return to proconti? They would get a wildcard for the races that are a big deal for the Sponsor (TdF, Romandie and TdS) and would have less problems. They already had a budget that was as big as Lampre's, they could be a really good proconti team and race all the races that are a big deal for the sponsor, so going WT made little sense from the start.
 
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Gloin22

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Re:

Mayomaniac said:
I don't get it, why wouldn't they return to proconti? They would get a wildcard for the races that are a big deal for the Sponsor (TdF, Romandie and TdS) and would have less problems. They already had a budget that was as big as Lampre's, they could be a really good proconti team and race all the races that are a big deal for the sponsor, so going WT made little sense from the start.
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Profits is all IAM cares for. And IAM was just not getting much revenue from sponsorship.

PCT still requires all the same resources, you can't train a team that will perform on selected WT races and Tour without proper planning, calendar and budget.

Anyway IAM offered only 1 year contracts, everyone knew this could be a short term project, the exposure didn't reach the desired targets and they pulled the plug.
 
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veji11

Apr 15, 2013
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This highlight again how the whole "world tour" licence thing has been a nightmare for cycling : 4/5 years ago you had teams fighting for all the UCI points they could get so they could be promoted or stay in the early WT. Teams like AG2R used every loophole possible, recruiting the winner of the Asia tour to have enough points, etc... it was already perverse.

Now it has become perverse in another way : the WT calendar is bloated and the WT "league" has actually increased differences between rich teams (Sky, Tinkoff, Astana, Movistar) and others that just manage to get by and actually just toss to the bin a good third of the WT official calendar, sending whatever end of the bench they can find on many races.

The elite should be a lot smaller and determined not by a licence but by some sort of results based ranking that would ensure the best say 12 or 14 teams are sure to be invited in the GTs and big races, but with many more wildcards, there would be more teams aspiring to play at higher level and getting invited into the big races. I'd rather have say a first tier of 30/35 teams of which the best 14 have garanteed places and the other get invited : more Wanty Gobert on Paris Roubaix and less Lampre Merida, etc..
 
TMP402

TMP402

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veji11 said:
The elite should be a lot smaller and determined not by a licence but by some sort of results based ranking that would ensure the best say 12 or 14 teams are sure to be invited in the GTs and big races, but with many more wildcards, there would be more teams aspiring to play at higher level and getting invited into the big races. I'd rather have say a first tier of 30/35 teams of which the best 14 have garanteed places and the other get invited : more Wanty Gobert on Paris Roubaix and less Lampre Merida, etc..
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+10000000 Couldn't agree more.
 
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Al Lesklar

Jun 14, 2012
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rune1107 said:
Profits is all IAM cares for. And IAM was just not getting much revenue from sponsorship.
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Michel Thétaz is a fan of cycling who hoped to combine business with pleasure. But no business can justify pouring money without end into a losing proposition. I believe IAM had the hope of signing Cancellara for the end of his career. That might have given the team a firmer Swiss fan base. But if you can't get a real star (ie not Chavanel or Haussler), maybe you should stay proconti and work the image of the scrappy locals who also give a chance to a few low-cost young imports from the Balkans or Africa (like the Swiss national football team).
 
Christian

Christian

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veji11 said:
Now it has become perverse in another way : the WT calendar is bloated and the WT "league" has actually increased differences between rich teams (Sky, Tinkoff, Astana, Movistar) and others that just manage to get by and actually just toss to the bin a good third of the WT official calendar, sending whatever end of the bench they can find on many races.
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This is very true. I imagine it will get even worse once teams have a maximum of 25 riders, which should be next season or in two years, if I am not mistaken? It makes me appreciate teams like Cofidis much more, but of course they are in a bit of a unique situation, where they have a very large budget, and are garanteed participation at two out of three GT's.
 
Z

Zinoviev Letter

Aug 18, 2010
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Re:

PremierAndrew said:
MTN/Dimension Data is a perfect example of the way in which IAM should have progressed. Hard to see DiData folding any time soon
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I'm not sure that the lottery of sponsor interest is necessarily effected by the way in which teams progress. Switzerland is a rich country but it's small and the local cycling enthusiast plutocrat is already committed to another team.
 
Z

Zinoviev Letter

Aug 18, 2010
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veji11 said:
This highlight again how the whole "world tour" licence thing has been a nightmare for cycling : 4/5 years ago you had teams fighting for all the UCI points they could get so they could be promoted or stay in the early WT. Teams like AG2R used every loophole possible, recruiting the winner of the Asia tour to have enough points, etc... it was already perverse.

Now it has become perverse in another way : the WT calendar is bloated and the WT "league" has actually increased differences between rich teams (Sky, Tinkoff, Astana, Movistar) and others that just manage to get by and actually just toss to the bin a good third of the WT official calendar, sending whatever end of the bench they can find on many races.

The elite should be a lot smaller and determined not by a licence but by some sort of results based ranking that would ensure the best say 12 or 14 teams are sure to be invited in the GTs and big races, but with many more wildcards, there would be more teams aspiring to play at higher level and getting invited into the big races. I'd rather have say a first tier of 30/35 teams of which the best 14 have garanteed places and the other get invited : more Wanty Gobert on Paris Roubaix and less Lampre Merida, etc..
Click to expand...

I'm not sure that the World Tour system has had that much of an impact. The big teams are stronger relative to weak ones than they used to be, but that's mostly down to quasi-national teams and a few very rich individual enthusiasts making more money available to a few teams than can be extracted from most potential commercial sponsors. That wouldn't really be effected by a changed race qualification system.

If anything, getting rid of automatic race admission for teams 13 through 18 might make things substantially worse. Smaller WT teams, mostly ones with commercial sponsors, are already offering their sponsors lower expectations of success because of the market distortion created by sponsors willing to pay more than a commercial rate. The one thing they do have to offer is a guaranteed participation at the big races, primarily meaning the Tour. Without that, those smaller WT teams would have trouble justifying even their smaller budgets to sponsors.
 
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