I only heard yesterday of Sky's decision to end their sponsorship of the world famous (or possibly infamous) cycling team at the end of the 2019 season. A sad time but it has been 10 years of superb results and some controversy, and I hope Sir Dave Brailsford can attract another suitable major sponsor to replace Sky.
Tough times I think in Pro Cycling at the moment, quite a few teams have lost sponsors. Mr Brailsford will struggle to find someone who is prepared to invest financially as much as SKY did.
I hope they do, it would be a shame to lose the main UK team from the Peleton :worried:
Mmm, will be interesting to see what happens. I'm sure it'll continue in some guise, but hard to imagine it having the same level of backing.
It's quite rare for a disbanded team to continue with the same personnel and a new sponsor. Most likely the cream of the team - and that's a lot of cream at Sky - will be poached over the final season. Which may be the best thing for the sport.
I believe if another sponsor is not found by April 2019 the riders etc have the OK to seek other teams for 2020 onwards
with their record of possible infringements of rules / drugs etc, is it likely that another sponsor would want to take them on as a team, with their history ?
I'd guess, only my opinion, that another sponsor would cherry pick those riders without issues, and steer clear of the others.
Quote from: RailGooner on December 16, 2018, 12:23:11 PM
It's quite rare for a disbanded team to continue with the same personnel and a new sponsor. Most likely the cream of the team - and that's a lot of cream at Sky - will be poached over the final season. Which may be the best thing for the sport.
Not so sure about that - plenty of teams can be tracked back decades under different title sponsors. ONCE became Liberty-Seguros which became Astana. Slipstream became Garmin became Cannondale became Education First Drapac. Reynolds became Banesto became Caisse d'Epargne became Movistar etc etc. Sky are comparatively unusual in being basically the only sponsor though, and they clearly invest huge sums.
I was sad to hear the news too!
Team NGF anyone??
on your bike :smiley-laughing:
Another victim of the 24-hour news cycle?
Sorry... :angel:
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/sport/cycling/team-sky-to-become-team-ineos-after-winning-the-backing-of-sir-jim-ratcliffe/ar-BBUXMtw?ocid=spartanntp (https://www.msn.com/en-gb/sport/cycling/team-sky-to-become-team-ineos-after-winning-the-backing-of-sir-jim-ratcliffe/ar-BBUXMtw?ocid=spartanntp)
Interesting! Probably one of a handful of companies richer than Sky that could've taken it on!
Phew! :sweat:
That's great news
wonder if they will continue as before, or actually clean their act up.
Quote from: class37025 on March 19, 2019, 06:29:53 PM
wonder if they will continue as before, or actually clean their act up.
:o Controversial.
Quote from: njee20 on March 19, 2019, 04:34:36 PM
Interesting! Probably one of a handful of companies richer than Sky that could've taken it on!
Not often that you hear the words "interesting" and "Sky" in the same sentence when talking about cycling! They've been very successful but I'm very much not a fan of them or they way they usually race. I much prefer women's racing these days which still has the element of uncertainty which the often formulaic men's stage races do not.
I'm not sure, Froome is certainly a ferociously analytical rider, which has possibly come at the detriment of some of the excitement of racing - knowing you can sustain X watts for Y minutes and that will bring back an attack isn't great, but I don't really think that's an issue with Team Sky, rather they've been best at capitalising on the present situation.
I think if you want more 'dynamic' racing then doing something like banner power readings in competition would liven it up. Removing Team Sky (/Ineos) wouldn't make a blind bit of difference IMO.