Hincapie: the straw that broke T-Mobile's back

http://cyclingfansanonymous.blogspot...stapleton.html

__________________
"You are like the wind and I like the lion. You form the tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours." -- Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates

I'm sceptic. I've thought for a long time that T Mobile (who has quite a presence in the US market) should try to hire at least a few US riders. Hincapie is a solid rider and is pretty non-controversial (compared to, say, Landis or Hamilton).

He's only non-controversial from the standpoint of never testing positive. But there's been a lot of grumbling about him, stemming from his years as Lance's super-domestique, and his winning a mountain stage in the Tour (not bad for a Spring classics rider).

Its a nice theory that Hincapie was the reason that TM pulled the plug... Well done by the spin doctor from Bonn and his pr team. But... its bull!

__________________
Cycling pictures


www.cyclingheroes-pictures.com

What was the reason?

Did they just lack the stomach for the fight?

There were several reasons. It would take a few 100 pages to write it all down. An important reason was the never ending German media campaign against the team and cycling in general. Another important reason was the way cycling is governt. You never know what comes next (ASO - UCI power struggle has a lot to do with what happened at the 2006 and 2007 Tour, in the years before it was all covered up...).

__________________
Cycling pictures


www.cyclingheroes-pictures.com

I keep seeing this charge that the UCI-ASO struggle is responsible for this and that team's troubles, but--aside from Unibet, which must have known beforehand that they would have troubles--I haven't seen anything to back it up. Allegations of the UCI mishandling the Rasmussen missed tests and other doping related issues can be explained by incompetence easier than a plot to damage the ASO. The UCI did not act any different before the spat over the ProTour.

I don't see how the UCI-ASO tiff affected T-Mobile much.

__________________
"You are like the wind and I like the lion. You form the tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours." -- Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates

I do see it. Incompetent yes, deliberatly creating a scandal to harm the Tour also a yes. I know more than I can post here.

__________________
Cycling pictures


www.cyclingheroes-pictures.com

Everyone is responsible for what he did! Riders and teams ran doping program, they stay responsible of that even and UCI, ASO, organisers, and medias are responsible of the cover up.

Poulidor - Je suis d'accord avec ce que vous dites.

Je respecte vraiment que vous donnez vos avis ici quand l'anglais n'est pas votre premiere langue. Evidemment le Francais n'est pas a moi. Vos perspicacites sont vraiment valeur et j'ai plaisir a lire vos messages.

Et le logiciel est utile de nos jours.

__________________

Merci pour tous ces compliments. Perpicacité, clairvoyance et humour vous vont si bien.
Votre français, produit par un logiciel, est relativement bon. Meilleur que mon anglais issu de mon cerveau.
Au plaisir de vous lire.

Poulidor - Merci du compliment. Votre anglais est tres bon.

Cyclingheroes - From the outside, as Bro has said, a lot of UCI's clampdowns can be perceived cynically as sabotage, but the whole Rasmussen affair seemed to be well explained by UCI despite Prudhomme's complaints. However, it is not surprising (but very dsappointing) that there would be sabotage of the Tour de France from UCI. Unfortunately the UCI may not realize how much that event represents cycling to the world.

Also your comment that you know more than you can post here indicates again how much the media is tongue-tied, perhaps due to their dependence on these bodies to ply their trade.

__________________

Deutsche Telekom was thinking about changing its sponsor strategies for a long time. New CEO René Obermann who leads the company for two years now wanted to do more soccer and more sponsoring for kids and amateur sports for the average...

http://www.faz.net/s/RubCBF8402E577F...~Scontent.html

__________________
Cycling pictures


www.cyclingheroes-pictures.com

yeah cos soccer is clean

It just makes me sick that sports like soccer are thought, in the public and sponsors eyes, to be clean. OP could have just opened everything up. But soccer is too big, like the Olympics, with too many influential people involved, and too much money. These sports are like the OJ Simpsons of the athletic world.

__________________