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Anderis said:
Good post I totally agree with.
The main concern for Cannondale is that the value of some of their key riders went up since they signed their previous deals and they may not be able to keep them all. Talansky signed his deal just after Dauphine win and just before going into the Tour de France as a sole leader (probably first time since 2008 when Garmin decided to focus on backing only one rider at TdF), so it is surely decent deal and significantly higher than his previous one. Now they have Slagter, whose value surely went up after 2014 (not sure to how big extent weaker 2015 balance that), Formolo, who surely will be looking now for bigger money as a great prospect after proving he can already compete at the WT level, Navardauskas who seems to have progressed in the last 2 years quite well. I imagine also Haas and Van Baarle may demand more than the previous time. And Hesjedal suddenly regained strong position in negotiations thanks to last Giro, since he didn't really do anything deserving big money between 2012 and last May.
I think there's a choice for Cannondale. Maybe they think it's better to give up on Martin and keep the rest of their prospects to have more balanced team, than keep their best rider at the expense of losing plenty of potential elsewhere. I don't know. I just speculate.
They need some wise decisions anyway, because something is obviously not working properly there this season.
You are right that things aren't working very well for them this season. The two problems in the early season seem to me to be the lack of a sprinter and the failure of their hilly classic team to perform once Martin fell off his bike. A decent sprinter with say three wins by now would make their pre-Giro season look a lot healthier and their hilly team is so strong on paper that a return from the Ardennes of a single ninth place is very poor even taking into account their main leader's misfortune. They did have a good Giro, so maybe things are looking up. Win a couple of stages at the Tour and all will be forgiven.
As far as their budget goes, well they are one of the less rich teams, so small increases in pay demands can have big consequences as you note. But they are still a WT team and really, when you look across their roster I still don't see too many riders in a position to get significant increases.
It's likely that they are overpaying Talansky. When you are a small budget team you simply can't hire a proven GT contender, at least not without replacing the rest of the team with minimum wage types. And you can't even really hire a prospect after he's shown himself to be one of the strongest but before he starts winning GTs because even they cost too much. Instead if you want a potential GT winner, you have to tie someone down before they've conclusively demonstrated that they are going to be good enough. That involves paying them more than their performances to date justify because you think you've spotted something more. Talansky seems to me to be that type of signing. If he gets markedly better, Vaughters looks like a genius. If he doesn't, their team budget will be be skewed for a couple of years by a significantly overpaid lower reaches of the top 10 sort of GC rider.
To date, Vaughters doesn't look like a genius: Talansky seems to be the third strongest climber on their team and that's not good enough to cut it against the best, for all that he's an excellent TT rider and seems to have good recovery. That said, the question is a long way from being answered, as Talansky is better than quite a number of GT contenders were at 26. He could still improve a lot.
Looking across the rest of their riders, Hesjedal's pay level is only going in one direction at this point in his career. His good Giro means he can probably get more than he could have two months ago, but nobody is going to pay a 35 year old top 10 GC man a GT winners wage. Danielson, as a long time leader, is probably on a somewhat higher wage than can really be justified at this point, but he'll be gone soon. Between those two alone that should free up more than enough money to deal with increased demands from the likes of Haas.
There really aren't many riders on Cannondale-Garmin who could potentially be earning notably bigger money elsewhere. The only three are Martin, Navardauskas and Formolo. I say potentially because it's hard to know what their market value actually is and what their other options are. Formolo is a real prospect, but unlike Talansky's situation there aren't a load of big budget Italian teams out there able to gamble a big pay cheque on him. Navardauskas is the kind of rider any team would love to have, but I find it very hard to judge what his monetary value is. Martin is one of the four or so truly top tier hilly classics riders, so again any team would like him, but few teams can offer him both the support he gets at Cannondale in those races and the ability to lead or co-lead any other race he wants. So the question is really at what point does the paycheque become big enough for him to give up a lot of his GC leadership opportunities and/or stage hunting opportunities?