Tour de France Winner’s Team Will Disband

New York Times ^ | August 10, 2007 | IAN AUSTEN

[leilani]

Tour de France Winner’s Team Will Disband
By IAN AUSTEN

The cycling team of Lance Armstrong and this year's Tour de France winner Alberto Contador said Friday that it will disband after failing to replace the Discovery Channel as its sponsor.

The announcement came at roughly the same that Contador held a news conference in Spain to deny the doping allegations that plagued him even before his victory last month.

In normal circumstances, a Tour de France win should have assured the continuation of the Discovery Channel squad which is owned by Tailwind Sports, a company based in Austin, Texas, partly owned by Armstrong.

But this has been far from a normal year for cycling or the Tour which had three riders test positive for doping practices, a race leader ejected for lying to doping officials and an announcement that another rider tested positive in an out of competition positive test before the race.

[snip]

"This is arguably the most successful sports franchise in the history of sport," Bill Stapleton, Tailwind's general manager, said in a statement. "This was a difficult decision, not made any easier by our recent Tour de France success. We were in talks with a number of companies about the opportunity and were confident a new sponsor was imminent. We have chosen, however, to end those discussions."

Armstrong, who won the Tour seven times for the team, said in the statement said that Tailwind will continue to operate but shift its attention to other sports.

"Clearly things need to improve on many levels, with a more unified front, before you would see us venture back into cycling," he said.

[snip]

More at NYT

[miele man]

From what I’ve read in other sources, Discovery’s leadership changed. Simply put, the new ruling junta did not want to sponsor Armstrong’s team while the outgoing president did.

I have to wonder if the Versus channel will continue to cover the TdF next year? Versus viewership for this year’s Tdf was in the 21-22 million range. Not too bad and certainly more than the barbaric so called mixed martial arts matches. I wish Versus would also cover the Tour of California or Georgia.