You gotta love it, Rock Racing will be at the starting line next Monday for the Tour de Georgia. The Pro Tour team Saunier Duval pulled out due to "numerous injuries to key riders" opening a slot for Rock Racing. After their reception and performance in the Amgen Tour of California it seemed like a lock that we would see the boys in black and neon green at all the biggest races on the US professional racing calendar. However, Medalist Sports announced last month that Rock Racing would not be invited to Georgia; managing partner Jim Birrell, told Velonews.com "I like all the riders he has on his team - it's just that renegade approach and his desire to steal the limelight away from the platform that has been created for everybody else is what troubles me."
It appears that Medalist and Michael Ball were able to reach an agreement, hats off to both parties for sitting down and making this happen. This is a good thing on so many levels. First off, Rock Racing is the most popular new team on the US domestic racing circuit. Secondly, at the recent Redlands Cycling Classic, with all the best domestic pro riders in attendance, Rock Racing rode superbly and took the overall win with Santiago Botero. And probably most importantly, Rock Racing is bringing new eyeballs to the sport and those peepers belong to the young fans in the always critical 18-35 year old demographic.
On a personal level, the news is bittersweet for me. I am heading off to be one of the event announcers at the upcoming Sea Otter Classic and was looking forward to having Botero, Sevilla, Hamilton, Pena, etc. in the field for the National Racing Calendar(NRC) circuit race on Saturday. I am still hoping the Rock Racing sends a team to Sea Otter, team member Doug Ollerenshaw won there several years back. However, if it takes my disappointment to get Rock Racing into the Tour de Georgia I guess I will just have to live with it.
The next item on the agenda is to figure out a way to get Astana into the Tour de France. Short of the Kazakhstani government cutting off natural gas supplies to France, I think this might be an impossible task. Anybody out there have a solution?
Bruce
Active Expert: Bruce Hildenbrand
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Dennis
in response to: susie b
I agree with you bruce, I was thrilled to see that Rock got into Georgia.
The situation with Astana is simply intolerable, I don't know if I'll be able to follow the Tour come July.
Preventing the previous years winner and podium finishers racing from their races (without any valid reason, see Rabo getting invited), is the biggest mistake ASO could've ever make.
Contador & Levi winning almost every race they enter speaks volumes, and we wont have a worthy winner in the Tour if they are not allowed to line up...
Disgusting politicks... Whatever it takes, get Astana in the Tour!!!
Bruce Hildenbrand
suzieb asks a few questions......
There was no specific process used by ASO to determine which teams got invited to the 2008 Tour. After the debacles last year when ASO was required to invite all the Pro Tour teams (except Unibet!), ASO wanted to have 100% control over each and every rider and now they have it.
The whole sponsorship thing at the Tour is very complex. Towns and villages pay for stage starts and finishes, other things like the official car, beverage, etc. are pretty obvious. The jersies are sponsored by companies like Credit Lyonnais, a bank, for yelow, Super Champion, a super market, for mountains and PMU which is para mutiel horse race betting for the green. The teams do not usually sponsor anything during the Tour. Certainly, backroom deals have been done in the past for participation at the Tour. Maybe the Kazhakstani government can work something out!
As I said before, my guess about Rabobank is that they cut a deal last year with ASO. There was no legal way that ASO could have ejected Rasmussen so they probably told Rabobank that if they withdrew Rasmussen then they could come back next year. If they allowed Rasmussen to ride into Paris in yellow then Rabobank's future participation in the Tour was in serious jeopardy.
Bruce
Who do you think at ASO actually makes the decision? Is it voted on by a board or decided solely by Clerc &/or Prudhomme?
I do like the way your mind thinks though. What do the various sponsors pay for at the Tour? Who pays for the aerial footage? What if the Kazak govt paid for that, like Rock Racing did at the ToC? And they need to hire whoever did the RR commercial, as that was awesome. I never tired of it the entire race.
I am losing hope however. Back in Feb when the news broke, I didn't TOTALLY panic at the time as I thought surely something would get worked out. It's just unbelievably unjust (& a farce) to bar that one team & not Rabobank, etc. And the fact that it is keeping the previous year's Tour WINNER & 3rd place finisher from competing, well, I just can't believe it still.
I can't remember if I saw it here or somewhere else, but supposedly this decision was applauded in France. How did they spin it that it makes sense to invite THE team responsible for the biggest embarrassment the Tour had experienced in years? One of my most vivid memories of last year's Tour was reading about all the French & other Euro headlines after Chicken was plucked from the race. "The Tour is dead!"; "The Tour is a joke"; "Put the Tour out of its misery", etc. But of course, they have to invite Rabobank as the ASO made a deal with them last year. Guess ASO didn't realize the impact of that decision at the time or at least they didn't get their spinmeisters to do a very good job LAST year.