Liberty sponsorship gone
Liberty pulls plug on sponsorship.
This move by Liberty-Seguros should send a chill down the spine of riders in the entire pro peloton. When major sponsors pull their entire support from the sport it should get every rider's attention, and hopefully encourage everyone involved to do the right thing. The Spanish team's budget was estimated to be over $10 million, but now riders like Alexander Vinokourov will scramble to find a team for the remainder of the season.
Imagine you're a clean rider who is unknowingly surrounded by a corrupt organization and then something like this happens. It can take several years for some riders to rebound and get over this experience. Not to mention the guilt by association factor.
Despite the sport's financial loss I believe it's a big step forward to combat the doping problems in professional cycling. Liberty-Seguros is doing the right thing and should be commended. It's one thing for a few riders to get caught cheating, but when upper management is involved it's an embarrassing association.
After the scandal involving Roberto Heras during the Vuelta last fall you would think that team management would clean up the entire organization. Since Manolo Saiz is involved it makes one wonder about his days of leading ONCE during their run of success.
Based upon the news item from Velonews this could reach much further into the sport than just the Liberty team. It's hard to imagine one doping network within a particular sport to have as many as 200 riders involved. Several networks including that many, sure, but are that many so dumb to be involved in one scheme? Well, then again, they are doping.....good decision making abilities have long since passed.
This move by Liberty-Seguros should send a chill down the spine of riders in the entire pro peloton. When major sponsors pull their entire support from the sport it should get every rider's attention, and hopefully encourage everyone involved to do the right thing. The Spanish team's budget was estimated to be over $10 million, but now riders like Alexander Vinokourov will scramble to find a team for the remainder of the season.
Imagine you're a clean rider who is unknowingly surrounded by a corrupt organization and then something like this happens. It can take several years for some riders to rebound and get over this experience. Not to mention the guilt by association factor.
Despite the sport's financial loss I believe it's a big step forward to combat the doping problems in professional cycling. Liberty-Seguros is doing the right thing and should be commended. It's one thing for a few riders to get caught cheating, but when upper management is involved it's an embarrassing association.
After the scandal involving Roberto Heras during the Vuelta last fall you would think that team management would clean up the entire organization. Since Manolo Saiz is involved it makes one wonder about his days of leading ONCE during their run of success.
Based upon the news item from Velonews this could reach much further into the sport than just the Liberty team. It's hard to imagine one doping network within a particular sport to have as many as 200 riders involved. Several networks including that many, sure, but are that many so dumb to be involved in one scheme? Well, then again, they are doping.....good decision making abilities have long since passed.
posted by NashvilleCyclist.com at 5/25/2006 10:47:00 AM
1 Comments:
i can't help but wonder....if saiz is involved, that pretty much means the whole team is involved, right? or at least a large portion of them(i think we're already pretty sure about heras). so...one team is doping, and their results are good(they did win the vuelta), but not great(they didn't do a whole lot else). so what does that mean about the rest of the peloton?
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