Re:
rick james said:
If you like to cheer for Manchester City and avidly watched every GP during Schumacher's 5 years of dominance, then sure, this is a good thing. There's nothing 'wrong' per se with what Sky are doing (other than that buying people out of contract and football-style tapping up has never been 'the done thing' in cycling, clearly the times are changing, but Sky seem only too willing to invoke The Unwritten Rules when it suits them), but as Red Rick points out, sure it might be logical, but that doesn't mean we have to like it. Just like Manchester City looking to buy Riyadh Mahrez in January because Leroy Sané was out for six weeks, having a team with the funds to just do as it pleases does take away from the enjoyment of the sport. Of course everything around Sky has led to a whirlwind of bitterness, but a marketplace killer like that is never really a
good thing for the sport. Because what do we watch for? To be entertained. Following the sport is our hobby. We're not pros. And if one team is so overpowered that its reserves can humiliate the opposition, that's only fun to watch up to a point, save for those who just like to associate themselves with the winners. After that, it just gets samey and predictable.
Because ensuring you have the best talent and being the best in the sport is best for business - up until the point where a lack of spectacle drives down audience figures and being the best in the sport isn't best for business anymore. I'll go back to my combat sports analogy. You need a champion people will either pay to see win, or pay to see get beaten. If people like the champion, that's great. They'll pay to see them. If people don't like the champion, though, they want to see them get beaten. In that case, they need believable challengers. Those challengers don't necessarily need to be able to
win - if they come close but the champion is just too good for them when push comes to shove... that's good for business. People will pay to see the rematch, people will wonder, who can take the champion down when the last challenger was close but not close enough. But if the challengers are of a level that's clearly beneath that of the champion, people aren't as likely to pay to see that, because it's an eminently skippable fight. If you don't like the champion and you think him retaining is inevitable because the challengers aren't a believable threat, then why would you watch?
That's the problem. Because Sky have basically waved the chequebook at every quality talent - and again, if you have the resources to do that, it's easy to see why you would, part of the reason Sky have got where they are is that they've invested a lot more wisely than other big budget teams like BMC and Katyusha - it feels like we're headed for a future where the only viable threats to the Sky train will be riders that were offcuts from Team Sky in the first place, seeing as inevitably not all of these great espoirs will turn into great pros, and not everybody meshes with the way Team Sky do things, as talents who've regressed or stagnated there like Thomas Löfkvist, Ian Boswell, Joe Dombrowski and, at time of writing, Sebastian Henao, can attest (the latter is still on the books and still has time to develop, but hasn't kicked on to the level that might have been expected). There's a whole generation of pros whose only experience of high level mountain racing is the follow-the-train technique, where their only recognised tactic for GC racing is trying to fall backwards as slowly as possible, and fans are reliant ever more on aging veterans to provide the fireworks - people like Nibali and Valverde, which inevitably causes a lot of cognitive dissonance among the more clued-up fans too. Contador's gone. The Quintana that tried to stick it to Froome in 2013 and won the Giro in 2014 seems to be on the out. When they're inevitably gone, who's going to fill the void where once there were contenders who were unafraid to challenge the teams that had the race in a stranglehold?
Therefore, to paraphrase Red Rick earlier, it's not illogical, it's sensible and smart recruitment from Sky, and clearly they have a relationship with an agent that has enabled them to seal a few deals here. They've got a position of being able to dominate the market thanks to their budget, and they're spending that budget seemingly wisely - albeit a little amorally, as I'm not convinced that historically teams have really factored in a column for "paying off riders' fines for breaking contracts" into their annual costs spreadsheet - but that doesn't mean we have to like it, and it's bad for the overall depth of competition and variety and unpredictability of the sport, which for many fans is one of its biggest selling points. And when you take away something which is a selling point for a lot of fans, it's not surprising if a few decide to stop buying.
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