Kennf1 said:
True, but Trek's interest is in maximizing income, not promoting the best interests of the sport. They knew Armstrong was their meal ticket, and acted accordingly. Bad behavior? Certainly. But also entirely predictable.
I agree with you that Trek's interest is in maximizing income but it seems clear that they ignored long-term income for short-term income as is so common on Wall Street these days. Trek's long-term income potential is tied to the future of Pro Cycling and in that regard I very much agree with Race Radio that trying to sweep doping under the carpet results in short-term gain for the sport and long-term damage.
Now, all that being said I don't dispute that the Armstrong brand was a bigger meal ticket for Trek than the LeMond brand. We can simply compare 7 Tours to 3 from an American competitor, know that Trek sells mainly in North America and conclude with a high degree of certainty that the Armstrong label is going to be better for their sales. None of that calculation however justifies the torpedoing of the LeMond bicycle brand.
I was working in the bike industry as a shop mechanic for a Trek dealer at the time Trek discontinued the LeMond brand - we were shocked because it seemed to us to be a completely nonsensical decision. LeMond's were our shops' best-selling road bike, they were selling very well on the US National level, and they were high quality - I assembled about 50 of them personally. They had a niche in the market especially with their 2 steel models (Buenos Aires and Zurich) as a high performance affordable steel bike; this was back before production carbon basically made steel obselete as carbon was very expensive at that point in time. So from a business point of view there was no reason to torpedo a successful brand just to make room for the Armstrong brand; they could have at minimum sold off the brand to another company. For some reason that went on behind closed doors Trek felt they had to choose 100% percent between either Armstrong or LeMond.