Re:
MatParker117 said:
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/aqua-blue-sport-will-not-race-in-2019/
Really needs to be some reform of the wildcard system, the term has become an oxymoron in most races.
Well, we've debated the value of ProContinental at the moment in other ways - the UCI have more or less killed it as a competitive level at the biggest races to prevent teams circumventing it like Cervélo and BMC did, getting all the benefits of not having to fix their calendar and saving money on the licence, spending the balance on riders and getting stars big enough that any race they wanted to do would take them (Sastre, Hushovd and Haussler for Cervélo, Evans and Ballan for BMC). As a result of a combination of the UCI's reforms and the introduction of bigger budget teams like Sky and post-WT BMC, as well as the end of the days of riders returning from bans being 'quarantined' at the ProConti level for a year or two, there's little reason for a genuine front line contender to be on a potential wildcard team and any riders that do interject themselves into stage race GCs or the upper echelons of classics will swiftly be hoovered up by a top tier team and placed in the support of a bigger front line contender - Leopold König from NetApp to Sky, Egan Bernal from Androni Giocattoli to Sky, Andrea Guardini from Vini Fantini to Astana, Sonny Colbrelli from Bardiani to Bahrain, Victor de la Parte from CCC to Movistar and so on - and so the era of riders on wildcard teams who focus on just one goal a season and are able to contend with the best in that - like in the days of Pozzovivo riding for CSF or Mosquera at Xacobeo-Galicia - are more or less over, and nowadays the only major names at the ProContinental level are riders who are past their best but still are able to secure invites, score a few results or both based on name value, like Pippo Pozzato, and young guys who are likely to get out unless, like, say, Wout van Aert, they are specialists in other disciplines who get more freedom riding at this level to pursue their multiple goals - and sure, sometimes those riders are just angling for a return to the World Tour, like Luís León Sánchez at Caja Rural in 2015 - and riders who have burnt some bridges, like Juan José Lobato. Riders like Nacer Bouhanni and Warren Barguil, frontline big names who voluntarily drop a level, are few in number, and are invariably from four countries only: the three Grand Tour hosts, and Belgium, where the wider number of wildcards and the nigh on guarantee you'll get a start in all major classics you want makes it viable.
I've said my bit about why I never found Aqua Blue to be an especially appealing team for race organisers to bring as a wildcard, and frankly this year the riders of theirs that I had most interest in seeing were the young prospects, not the established names, because while they may be able to secure better results, we more or less know what we're getting from Adam Blythe, Stefan Denifl et al, whereas what Eddie Dunbar can do in the future is much more intriguing.
But this year has been a slow and toxic demise for the team. From the calls that they were front of the queue to sign Richie Porte a month ago to dissolution is a rapid fall which makes me wonder if some of the money coming in was contingent on particular invites or a big name coming in, which meant that either the plug was pulled or the attempt to sign Porte was a last roll of the dice to persuade those helping bankroll the team that it was progressing or going to get the invites it had missed out on in 2018. I would argue that the team maybe suffered from "too much too young" syndrome, because the way Delaney acted in the wake of not getting a Vuelta wildcard displayed a real sense of entitlement that rubbed a few up the wrong way - and also an attitude that didn't seem to comprehend that it was equally arbitrary that they got the wildcard in 2017, mainly as there was a paucity of home interest wildcards and they had a few decent riders. That's why we get statements like "This year we have found it increasingly difficult to obtain race invitations and recognition from race organisers in how unique and how well supported our project should be." - as if the fault is not that of the team brass overspending or overstepping the mark with their expectations, but instead it's the race organisers' fault for not recognising the value inherent in Aqua Blue Sport. Similarly, there is the same sense of arrogance and hand-washing in the subsequent statement about the failed merger: "Over the past weeks we had formed the basis of an agreement many times, but unfortunately common sense did not prevail" - again, the onus was on Verandas Willems to realise that it would be better for them to merge with Aqua Blue, not on Aqua Blue to revise their offering after they had done their bit to anger the team's brass with their premature announcement.
By winning a stage presumably he thought the team had done enough to merit another wildcard, but with two more Spanish wildcard teams and Cofidis with a Spanish contingent and a lot of money on the Vuelta, really they had to offer a more attractive proposition in 2018 to justify excluding one of those than they had done in 2017. With the ongoing problems with the bike supply having turned out an expensive folly (it was an interesting experiment but we all knew it would be fraught with difficulty, and has resulted in being abandoned when it potentially cost the team their biggest win of the season).
Zinoviev Letter made this point upthread:
I’m not a particular admirer of Delaney (as I’ve already said, rich dudes with pro sports teams as hobbies give me hives). But I really can’t blame him for being annoyed at discovering that there’s nothing he can do short of spending another fortune to get his expensive toy into races.
And there we have the problem. This is why the team is folding. Because it's a rich dude's hobby. That was the model they set up, with no named or title sponsors, and that's how they've lived. And they got a good start in the sport last year thanks to good luck and timing enabling them to get a GT wildcard that most other years they wouldn't have got (would they have got in ahead of Bora in 2016? Would they have got in ahead of Direct Energie if the team hadn't upset Guillén by having the whole lot of them in the autobus in the Formigal stage?), which might have given him the impression that this running-a-team and getting-major-invites malarkey wasn't as difficult as it is, and given him inflated expectations, because he sure sounds entitled in the same way as Johan Bruyneel in 2010 ("we've got guys who've put a lot of money in, they deserve to get something back for that!", as if all of the other teams were run on a wing and a prayer alone). So, when faced with the realities of the ProContinental level a year later and realising there is a ceiling unless the budget is increased, he takes his ball and goes home whinging about it. And now you learn why almost all of the teams have named title sponsors, because that's who pays the ongoing bills to enable them to continue to function. Relying on a constant stream of income from a private source is always fraught with difficulty because it's a plaything, not an investment, and the benefit gleaned from it is not profitable marketing but personal enjoyment, and if the amount that needs to be spent does not provide that enjoyment anymore, then the plug is always likely to be pulled. That's not a problem of the ProContinental level - just look at Oleg Tinkoff - but at the ProContinental level it is amplified because a lot of the time things are dependent on the team's ability to sell themselves for wildcards, and there's a deeper pool of opposition for those wildcards - including some with some natural advantages that Aqua Blue cannot match - this year than there was in 2017.
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