The Cookson legacy

[fmk_RoI]

As in office, so too in retirement: over-promising, under-delivering:

Brian Cookson has been forced to put a hold on his plans to launch a UCI women's team in 2019 due to a lack of financial resources. The former UCI President told Cyclingnews on Friday that the hunt for a main financial backer has proven to be the biggest obstacle, and that the earliest likely date to launch a team would be in 2020.

And this fascinating comment from Cookson: surely a former UCI president and former boss of British Cycling where women contributed so much to the medal haul should be able to show the financial value of the sport:

"The difficulties and uncertainties of the global economy and, here in the UK, Brexit, are compounded by the difficulty in justifying the return on such an investment by demonstrating historical evidence of that return in terms of media coverage, impact, and so on."

While Cookson seeks to blame the global economy and Brexit, I do wonder how much of an impact the recent spate of investigations and inquiries has had on the UK sponsorship market. Here I would look more to JTL-Condor's problems than OnePro and Trek-Drops, those two having issues of their own (bad management and bad luck). Although personally I suspect that Cookson's failure here is that there is now a glut of women's teams and the star riders sponsors will want in order to guarantee a return on their investement aren't there. But this I would have expected Cookson to have foreseen and already have key riders committed to the team.