End of an Era

Discovery is no More.

Tailwind Sports the owner of the Discovery Channel Cycling Team has announced the team will disband after the 2007 season. Even though the team has had significant success winning eight out of the last nine Tours de France in the current climate in cycling it is not surprising that the team elected to disband. Although team officials had announced that they felt they were close to having signed a prime sponsor for 2008 to replace Discovery Channel, the fact that they had not announced anything at the Tour lead some to believe that the team's demise was imminent. Historically, new sponsors have always been announced and attached to teams during the Tour.

Discovery has been one of the largest and best funded teams in the peleton. As discussed in previous issues, however, it is not unusual for most riders to be on short term contracts of one to two years. The period following the Tour de France is typically the time that teams and riders begin to announce their line ups for the next season. While the loss of major sponsors does result in riders losing their jobs, invariably another team steps into the void.

When Motorola met a similar demise in the mid 1990's, it was a dark period in American cycling as it was the end of the 7-Eleven/Motorola legacy as the first American team in Europe. Jim Ochowitz found himself unable to find a replacement sponsor for the team and it too disbanded leaving many young American riders scrambling for rides elsewhere. Although 3-4 riders signed with the new French team Cofidis, including Lance Armstrong, it was the small American team Subaru-Montgomery Securities that filled the vaccum created by the demise of Motorola. The team had signed USPostal Service and had began to look to expand its presence in Europe. Many former Motorola riders ended up at US Postal Service which after a couple of years of growth became a mainstay of the peleton.

The demand for top talent, including American talent is always present even in an environment that is as toxic as the current sponsorship environment in cycling. Teams are always hiring riders. It is just that some teams do not have the budget that other teams have. Some teams look to move up by hiring top talent, i.e. Slipstream, which has already announced the signing of David Millar, Dave Zabriskie and Magnus Backstead. Other teams hire riders based upon the marketing goals of its sponsors. Prior to the doping announcement regarding T-Mobile's activities in the mid 1990's there had been some speculation that T-Mobile was going to become less German and more American. George Hincapie had previously been linked to a move to T-Mobile although that has yet to be confirmed. Discovery's Belgian national champion was sure to move to either Predictor Lotto or Quik.Step this year as both teams are willing to pay a premium to have the national champion wearing their jersey for the first part of the season.

In reality Discovery Channel had largely ceased to be an American team as Americans were in the minority of its riders and Discovery did not even contest the races that make up Philly week in June. Levi Leipheimer should have no difficult finding a ride for next season. Alberto Contador will likely have some difficulty unless and until Operacion Puerto is finally resolved.

Teams fold and teams are born each year. It is a difficult process and it is sad to see a team with the history of Discovery Channel calling it quits. Just like it was sad to see Mapei and ONCE disappear. The key to the ongoing viability of the sport, however, is long term sponsor support and that is jeopardized by a culture that still does not seem to understand the long term damage that doping in pursuit of short term gain causes. As Lance Armstrong noted in announcing Discovery's demise, the ASO's threat to return the Tour de France to national teams makes the search for sponsors difficult as sponsors want quantifiable return on their investment. They want to make sure that the team has significant exposure and that the team does not undermine its core marketing goals or injure its brand. Right now in cycling, that is difficult if not impossible to guarantee.

So What Happens Next Year?

At the end of the day, all cycling is driven by sponsorship. Sponsorship is driven by marketing. Marketing is driven by the desire to get products and brands as much positive recognition as possible in a cost effective manner. The UCI needs a top level team with strong ties to the United States. The ASO needs a top American team committed to racing clean. I would therefore expect that Jonathon Vaughter's Team Slipstream will not only be lining up for next year's Tour start but that it will be invited to join the ProTour in Discovery's absence.

There are other teams which will potentially fold this off season but there will be others to replace them. At the end of the day, the UCI's real difficulty is its desire to have a 20 team ProTour paying 20 licensing fees to it for entry into all the top races, the Grand Tour organizers really only want to have to invite 15-18 teams to their races and want freedom to invite more domestic teams. The Vuelta has long shown that the Italian teams do not take it seriously. There really are only about 15 teams that have the wherewithal to actually compete at the level the ProTour demands.

The loss of Discovery, the impending suspension of Astana, and questions around the ongoing sponsorship of Unibet.com, Cofidis, Credit Agricole, and Gerolsteiner all make it likely that this could be the end of the ProTour as the UCI has desired. The UCI formed the ProTour to ensure that sponsors got value for their commitment. The problem is that finding sponsors who want to run the risk of the baggage that comes with cycling is diminishing. Having a Tour de France contested by national teams may not be the worst thing that could happen.

Way Post Tour Recap

For those of you waiting for my Post Tour Recap, who have been waiting a week, I apologize. First, having returned from vacation and having not seen much of the Tour's final week, it took awhile to get up to speed in the real world. Second, I followed up nine days of vacation by taking this Friday off to go to my niece's wedding. Third, I had committed to go climb a mountain with our older scouts on Saturday. So, when you have been out of the office for more than a week and you are going to be out of the office for a couple of more days immediately thereafter, you have to focus on first things first. Plus, I jokingly told someone who ask this week that this year I would not do a Post Tour Recap until all the drug tests had been processed. So here are my random thoughts on various things that transpired at the Tour.

Why Dope

The whole issue of drugs has been beaten to death by the cycling media, the regular media and average joes. However, in evaluating cycling, it is important to take a step back and evaluate what really causes the use of drugs in sport. It is easy to claim that cyclists are not very smart, but I think that is an argument which can be applied to all professional sports. First, have you ever noticed that with the exception of former US Senator/Rhodes Scholar and and New York Knick Bill Bradley, that there are very few athletes who had strong academic credentials?

But it is easy and elitist to claim that cyclists are just stupid. That ignores the fact that they like most people are rationally calculating hedonists who seek to maximize their economic return for their skill set. Cycling is no different that motorsports, soccer, baseball, basketball and other professional sports. Cyclists seek to maximize their economic return which is determined by their in sport success. In general, most cyclists are making very modest salaries. There are a few big named riders who make significant salaries. Most of the rest make very modest salaries with the riders on small teams making almost nothing. Very few of them have adequate health insurance. None of them have retirement plans. So, if you want to make money, you have to win. By winning, you get to keep the prize money you win, and you can turn wins into a move up to a bigger team and a better salary. Adding to that is if you win you can build your own brand through personal sponsorship arrangements.

Another factor cannot be ignored, and that is the fact that relationships in cycling are very short term. Cyclists are typically on very short contracts. The average guy in the peleton is on a one or two year contract. Only the top riders, i.e. dominating sprinters and strong GC contenders, ever get a three year deal. Deals longer than that are almost unheard of in cycling. If a rider has a bad year, it has very real economic impact on them. So there is a short term bias towards generating results now.

Moreover, with sponsors and team management demanding results, there is added pressure on cyclists. Teams want winners, and they claim they want riders to win clean, however, short of locking all your riders in their rooms when they are not training and racing, you cannot ensure that riders will not succumb to the pressure to get instant results and improvement. It is beyond dispute that many teams either engaged in active doping programs over the years or willfully ignored the evidence that their riders were engaged in systematic doping.

Cycling is a blue collar sport which, I posit, has much more in common with stock car racing than Americans would ever concede. If Richard Petty or Dale Earnhardt, Sr., had been born in Belgium, I bet you that their names would have been Eddy Merckx or Freddy Maertens. However, there are a lot of other guys out there who want to be the Intimidator, the King or the Cannibal who will never accomplish that who spend their weekends racing at lower levels in hopes of moving up. Most never will. Of those who do, most will have modest success.

So why do riders keep doping when they know it is bad for their health, they know that they may get caught, they know that it is expensive? It is because the think they have to in order to remain competitive. While the long term ramifications of doping are serious and severe, when a guy is concerned about making a living next year, you will never get riders to think about the long term. So mediocre riders cheat to compete. Star riders cheat to win. They all cheat because doing so is what they think they sport demands for them to be honored and appreciate and most importantly to get paid.

Finally, I find the press attention that cycling got from the American press during this last edition of the Tour focusing on the impact that drugs has had upon the validity of the sport incredibly hypocritical when Barry Bonds pursues Hank Aaron's career home run mark in the midst of an ongoing drug investigation by federal officials. Everyone knows Bonds did steroids and he even conceded to the federal grand jury that he utilized drugs provided by BALCO although he thought it was "flaxseed oil." Yeah, Barry, Richard Virenque claimed the same thing.

On Contador

Alberto Contador won the Tour in a manner that he himself conceded was not the way to win it. The young Spaniard is, however, a legitimate GC leader as evidenced by his win at Paris-Nice earlier this year. He was not able to match Rassmussen on all of the climbs, and I think that all the main teams made a major tactical mistake when they let Rassmussen go on the first big climbing stage. I think they all believed that Rassmussen would follow the approach he had done in prior years to win the KOM polka dot jersey, which was to attack on the first climbs, get a big lead and then defend that jersey. I don't think anyone thought he would improve as he did on the time trial. Contador will continue to be hounded by his link to Operacion Puerto which resulted in his exclusion from last year's Tour before being cleared of wrong doing. Contador did provide a DNA sample and has not been linked to any of the blood seized in the Puerto investigation. He may have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time riding for a team that it has become apparent now was engaged in a systematic doping program.

On Leipheimer

Levi Leipheimer gives hope to hard working normal guys. He has never been flashy, never been dominating in a Grand Tour, has had more bad luck over the years than good luck. I felt that when he returned to Discovery that he would go from being a perennial top ten GC rider to a top five and maybe a podium rider. He becomes only the second American to finish on the podium in two different Grand Tours with his prior third place finish in the Vuelta to join Greg LeMond who finished on the podium both in the Tour and the Giro. No one has ever questioned Leipheimer's skill and he has never been linked to doping. He has always just gone about getting the job done in a consistent manner.

On Rassmussen

Dane Michael Rassmussen has always been something of an enigma. He has always been strong in the mountains, but he never seemed to engender confidence of his teams or teammates. He was always at best a KOM rider not a GC threat. His downfall this year comes from the fact that he not only may have lied about where and how he was training but also that he attempted to engender confidence in his "cleanness" by telling everyone that he could be trusted. As one contributor to VeloNews noted, challenging the media a la Gary Hart, just guarantees someone is going to take you up on the challenge and catch you in inconsistencies. Most importantly, no one is going to get the benefit of the doubt for accidentally forgetting to tell doping authorities where you are in this day and age. There is no excuse for a professional athlete to not know that failure to comply fully with all doping regulations will bring you under suspicion regardless of whether you are clean or not.

On Vinokourov

The man let down a whole country that was supporting his effort to be the first Eastern rider to win the Tour. As much as I have enjoyed watching his aggressive riding over the years, Vinokourov's career is over. It is sad to see him become an even bigger Kazakh joke than Borat.

On Hypocrisy

I was dismayed by the protest by the French and German teams at the start of Stage 16 who to protest doping held things up. While it is good for riders to take responsibility and address the issue of doping and their objections to those who do, Cofidis participated in the protest only to withdraw from the Tour later after its rider Christian Moreni failed a drug test and was arrested and T-Mobile participated after Patrik Sinkewitz had dropped out but was found to have failed a pre Tour drug test.

On Testing

Testing is working. More people are getting caught and more importantly more people getting caught are conceding that they cheated.

Reforming the Grand Tours

If Tour organizers really want to recapture the moral high ground, then it has become apparent to me that they have to change the way they organize the race. All three mountain stages in the Pyrenees were nearly 200km long. The tradition of six high mountain stages in the Alps and Pyrenees probably needs to change. Especially where riders are forced to ride over 5 or more categorized climbs. The time trials are also too long. If you don't want riders to dope, then you cannot have courses that are so demanding that they all but encourage riders to cheat. So here is what I propose for reform of the course to improve the likelihood that riders won't be forced to dope:

1. Mountain stages shall be no longer than 15o km and have no more than four categorized climbs. Mountain top finishes shall only be permitted to cities/resorts which are capable of housing all the teams at the end of the stage. Are you really committed to clean racing when you put 13 categorized climbs and 600km of racing in the final mountain stages of a grand tour and riders have to face a long transfer back down the mountain after a stage?

2. Rolling stages like Stage 5 which mimic some of the one day classics with multiple small categorized climbs shall not 175 km and shall not have more than eight categorized climbs. If you are going to have a "dangerous" stage, make it important, but not decisive.

3. Flat stages shall be no more than 200 km long. Isn't this a stage race lasting three weeks as opposed to three classics or semi-classics strung out over a week?

4. There shall be no more than three time trials, including the prologue, all individual time trials, and any team time trials. No time trial shall exceed 45km and the total of all time trial mileage shall be no more than 100km. Who really wants to watch the 95th rider on GC slog through a 55km time trial to lose another 6 minutes on the leaders?

5. Let teams have ten man rosters with seven riders allowed to start every day. Four riders must ride every stage to be considered for the GC competition and any other competition, i.e. points, KOM, young rider. Of the other six riders, teams can use them as they like. Even soccer allows large rosters and substitutes.

6. Make the Team GC competition more meaningful by increasing the prize money and increasing the number of spots that are paid. At any given Tour, there will only be ten teams with legitimate contenders for the GC, Points and KOM prizes. To encourage better team performance, make the team award more meaningful and eliminate any team from the running for any doping violation or significant sanction. Individual pressure to keep up and perform caused this mess, so rewarding positive teamwork and team performance will hopefully improve the situation.

7. If you are going to change race history to remove past transgressors, then remove them all. If Riis cheated to win in 1996, then you cannot remove him, without also removing the whole podium which consists of Ullrich his teammate and Richard Virenque of Festina, all of whom have been touched by doping. You cannot claim the moral high ground only when convenient.

8. Move the prologue to Friday night and have rest days every Monday. That gives you a prologue and two sprint stages before a rest day and then two more rest days later on. By moving the prologue to Friday night, you keep the same number of stages in the race. Give the riders a legitimate opportunity to recuperate on a reasonable schedule.

9. As a corollary to number 1 above, no city hosting a stage finish nor stage start shall be selected that has inadequate hotel facilities to accommodate all riders. Before starting or after finishing the need for immediate rest and recovery for all riders is imperative. Long transfers are bad and must be eliminated.

10. Implement a "fair play" team and individual award that is significant. Recognize those teams and riders who embody what is good and reward them appropriately. Poor sportsmanship, rules violations and doping all detract/eliminate riders and teams from contention and are to be discouraged. Provide meaningful rewards will encourage good behavior.