Shocking news today – after 17 years in cycling, Rabobank is no more. The bank will continue to fund its teams for the remainder of their contracts, but the jerseys will be without their name and logo. Continue reading “Rabobank leaves cycling”
Category: Sponsor News
The International Basques
Finally I have the internet, so here’s some more news about Euskaltel’s transfer dealings. I was planning a big post about the rather more important news of the week but everything has pretty much been covered at this point, so here we are. Continue reading “The International Basques”
Euskalnews
Few tidbits relating to Basque team Euskaltel-Euskadi today. Remembering Victor Cabedo, and an open letter from former Euskaltel riders. Continue reading “Euskalnews”
IAM Cycling (Updated)
Some large news regarding new Swiss team IAM Cycling today – the 2013 ProContinental team has announced some (quite) big-name signings recently as their roster starts to take shape for their first season. Continue reading “IAM Cycling (Updated)”
Euskaltel-Festina in 2013?
L’Equipe is reporting today that the watchmakers will return to cycling for the first time since 2001 as co-sponsors of the Basque Euskaltel-Euskadi team. Recently, it was announced that Euskadi, the Basque regional government, will not be continuing its funding of the squad, so this rumour, if it turns out to be true, is good news for the men in orange. Fears over a decreased budget might yet be allayed.
Team Slogans
So yesterday I noticed a short story on Het Nieuwsblad, remarking upon how it was somewhat odd that the Belgian team would have their motivational buzzword chart-thing in English – “A strange finding on the bus of Lotto-Belisol.” This made me think about other such motivational words/phrases teams have used over the past two or three seasons, and I thought I would collect a few of them together. Continue reading “Team Slogans”
WorldTour Licenses 2012: Drama!
Today it was announced by the UCI that eight teams – Astana, BMC, Garmin-Cervélo, Lampre-ISD, Liquigas-Cannondale, Movistar, Rabobank, and Sky – have been confirmed for cycling’s top tier, the UCI WorldTour, next season. Also confirmed by the UCI were fifteen of the teams who will ride at Professional Contintal level in 2012. They are Accent Jobs-Willems Veranda’s, Androni Giocattoli, Acqua & Sapone, Bretagne-Schuller, Caja Rural, Cofidis le Credit en Ligne, Colnago-CSF Inox, Colombia-Coldeportes, Landbouwkrediet, Project 1t4i, Saur – Sojasun, Spidertech, Team Netapp, Topsport Vlaanderen-Mercator and UnitedHealthCare.
The Euskaltel Problem
Every few years or so, it seems that we have a piece of news telling us that the Basque national team, Euskaltel-Euskadi, is under threat of folding. However, this time, the threat seems more serious than it has been before. Today it was announced that the team is one of the five that are not in the top fifteen on the UCI’s sporting value points ranking. Assuming the top fifteen are ok with regards to the other UCI criteria (administrative, ethical and financial), Euskaltel will be fighting it out with the three French squads AG2R, Europcar and FDJ, and possibly whatever becomes of Geox-TMC for the remaining three WorldTour spots. It does, however, seem that Geox would need some sort of miracle to exist next year.
