T-Mobile to make sponsorship decision Sunday
 

Well,

the writing is on the wall here.


http://www.velonews.com/tour2007/new...s/12907.0.html

I feel bad for Bob Stapleton. He tried to do the correct thing, and is going to get burned by other bad actors.

Addidas and Audi are pulling out it looks like.

Tmobile must have an "out clause".

Too bad for the team, and I agree that Stapleton certainly got the poor end of the deal, considering how hard he was pulling for re-vamping the standard for keeping a team clean.

I, however, never liked their kit to begin with. The bikes - yes. The kit - not in a million years.

The only reason the German's lost interest is because their own drugged up cyborg got shot down. Typical euro politics.

I'm not sure the sport is necessarily LOSING American interest, so much as it never had any to begin with.

American interest is low because Americans only watch their stick and ball sports. Always have, always will.

My girlfriend is into NASCAR, where it seems that cheating is institutionalized and celebrated.

It seems like there are major scandals in football, basketball and baseball right now. In the U.S., officials turn a blind eye to it all - at least in cycling they are trying to crack down.

Amen to that. I just wished we'd have had the same anti-druggies looking into Major League Baseball for the last ten years. The shock effects in the US would have been astounding.

You have no clue about what you are talking about.
The NFL bans players for 4 games on first offense then more
MLB (finally) has strict policies.

People in the US HATE Barry Bonds right now. The league's commish will not even go to the record breaking game. Mark McGuire was not put in the hall of fame based on his usage.

They do not test as much as cycling, no doubt, but I believe the fans care more in the US sports . . . as far as really thinking it is shameful to do them. In cycling fans just know it is part of it. that is a blind eye if you ask me.

Too bad i didn't get the T Mobile colors on the Giant. It could have become a collectors item.

I didn't say that all of the scandals are related to doping - just that there were scandals. Some are (or were) doping, some are more generic cheating, or general moral conduct (hanging around with mobsters, weapons violations, dog fighting, hanging around in strip bars, etc, etc).

agreed 100% x100. I am so sick of how we (US) turn an eye to these horrible human beings and let them continue to do the crap they do . . . yet cheer for them and pay for tickets and buy jerseys.

not just t-mobile.

it seems likely that gerolsteiner and the german/italian team milram will be losing their main sponsors as well.
so, no german protour teams left in 2008.
another german pro-cycling team, wiesenhof, already lost it's sponsor. wiesenhof decided to pull out of cycling by the end of this year. others might follow.
the french cycling teams survived the 1998 desaster. However, unlike france, germany never was and never will be a cycling nation.
this may very well be the end of professional cycling - in germany at least.

Really?

There are two crew chiefs that are serving long term suspensions and their teams docked points, enough so that it altered where they were in the standings...and making the final chase is everything to these guys. Another lost his job.
Having spent more than a little time around these guys, yeah they push the edges of what the rulebook says, but the NASCAR engineers almost always catch them. And the penalties have been very severe.

I think both are sort of right. There is somewhat of a culture of cheating in NASCAR going back a long way. Stuff like having a piece of foam padding ready to toss out to get a caution, tricks with the engine and gas tank, etc. This, along with some oddities (people often winning when it would be a storybook type thing) have made some people skeptical of NASCAR and how legit it is. As such, NASCAR has made it a point to crack down on this hard to assure the fans that it is all on the up and up. A very savvy move by them IMHO, as perception is reality and when I have gone to races (just here in Indy) you cannot spend any time with fans without hearing how they believe 24 gets breaks here or there or DEI uses different restrictor plates, etc.

There are of course those types of incidents where individual teams push the limit. And then there are the "competetive cautions" where the management throws a caution just for the hell of it, which always seems to give some driver an advantage.

But here's my biggest beef, which I can best illustrate with an analogy. Let's say you had a track and field event, and the #2 guy couldn't quite catch the #1 guy in the race. So he reaches out with a sharp stick and jabs the #1 guy in the ass, which causes him to trip and fall, and then the former #2 guy wins the race. Would this sort of behavior be considered even remotely sporting? Let's get real - in any other sport, this sort of thing would result in ejection, a fine, and a ban of some sort.

I think this misses the point somewhat.... The point of NASCAR, F1 and other racing is to push the absolute limits of ENGINEERING, while staying barely within the rules, or at least near enough so as to not get caught or penalized. Which is all good and a legitimate part of the sport.

The difference with doping is that they are engineering PEOPLE, with potential long term health consequences. Is aspirin banned in sports? No. because it's deemed to have no long term consequences or risks. But EPO, Steroids, HGH, etc... those are all somewhat risky.

Take NASCAR off that list. It's spec racing. To compare NASCAR to F1 for engineering is like comparing the Hoover dam with lego blocks.

Spec or no spec, I don't care if you're racing grocery carts, there will be lots of engineering going in in the prep and setep of the equipment.

Yes, NASCAR is less of an engineering sport than Indy/CART which is less than F1. But that doens't mean engineering doesn't still factor heavily in the equation.

Can we get one of the moderators to move this thread to the Redneck/meathead section of the Forum?
:)