…'cuz he may be basing his team decision on it for 2012.
on tony martin since he said he wanted a team that would sign w/specialized so he could keep riding the shiv.
i wonder if that will also impact fabian since he may go back to saxo-bank, riis, and specialized.
FC has said that he will honor the last year of contract, but in cycling you never know…
Maybe Spesh should make a new marketing campaign out of this development…although I wonder how much of this is the bike and how much may be personal endorsement deals on the side. Either way a pretty nice win for the boys in Morgan Hill…
Not saying Specialized makes the best bikes, but for me it isn’t much of a contest when in one corner you have the pretty awesome trio of the Shiv/Tarmac/Venge and the other is the aging Graal/Dogma…
But the Graal does have those “fins” on the downtube. The Spec. doesn’t have that.
I also think the Tony Martin thing is more like it. Cav is a bright cookie and as such he was always going to leave signing any contract until after the worlds to see what is stock was then worth if he got the rainbow jersey. I think the problem in this strategy is that a lot of riders have moved around in the meantime and as such he now is having difficulty in finding a good fit with any team. There does not seem to be any obvious contenders out there who have a line up to provide a significant and potentially fast enough lead out train in a major tour whilst at the same time not having to split resources between himself and a GC contender in the same team. I think he is finding out the hard way that he was pretty spoilt in this respect at HTC.
I suspect that he might have felt Wiggins would be happy to focus on the Olympics next year for sky and that would leave him as team leader for the Tour de France. Wiggins and importantly Froomes performance in the Vuelta have thrown a bit of a spanner in the works in that it has ignited Wiggins’ desire to go for the tour as his recent sound bites have indicated. I think Cav might not be hearing what he wants to from Sky’s management at the moment who I suspect are loyal to the aspirations of Bradley as they very much see this part of the project as being alive. Another factor at Omega Pharma-Quick Step is Matt Brammeier. The two have been friends for years, a couple of scalies sharing a room in his early days with the British development squad. He got Brammeier into HTC last year, and having people around him he can trust is I think a massive part in any decison Cav makes, and one crucial in maintainig self belief. Thrown into a team of riders he does not know I can easily see Cav having a very mediocre season next year. With familiarity I feel his confidence will be intact and he can perform.
Personally I feel the bike issue is a smoke screen to buy his some thinking time, I do not believe it will be about the money as he will comand a good salary anywhere, nor is the Venge that good, I simply think he has not predicted being in this position and as such is very unclear what to do next, in hindsight I think he should not have come out with some of the disatisfaction with HTC at the begining of last year over a new contract. He should have compromised behind the scenes and outwardly said he was committed to the team long term. This approach I feel would have gone a long way towards securing a new major sponsor and the status quo would have been maintained at HTC which would in the long term have been in his best interests. He was never going to jump across late to a new team and have it built around himself this late in the season, too many of the riders he needed have been seperated into different teams which will make for some interesting racing next year and a Cav I believe who will be a little bit less dominant. If he does not go to Sky I wonder what the reaction will be from some of his fellow British team mates come the Olympics after they thrashed themselves into the ground in Denmark?
One other interesting little tidbit…yestereday during Q&A at end of Levi Leipheimer Gran Fondo (http://www.levisgranfondo.com/), someone asked LL about his plans for CY12. He explained his new team and said there was some “big news” but he couldn’t release it yet. He said something “…special” was going to happen so I think he was secret telling us who new bike sponsor is…or maybe he just meant something special…I dunno.
Awesome event BTW…