The Giro is always the better race, isn't it?
Yes, and it certainly won't change since ASO is complacent. They're clinging to the past too much.
I posted this earlier, but I think the only rider Sky have signed that was in the CQ top 50 rankings was Kwia. It's far more common for them to sign young riders or those not really wanted by their team. Of the 2018 Tour roster, for instance, Froome was not highly thought of at Barloworld, Bernal was a young and unproven rider, Castroviejo was a very good time trial rider but not world class, Kwia we've discussed, Moscon was a young hopeful who turned pro with Sky, Poels had done nothing really before hand, and was 21st and 38th in GTs the year before he signed for Sky, Rowe came through at Sky, whilst Thomas largely did too.
If you look at their wider roster, the two Henaos turned pro with Sky, as did Stannard, Puccio, Basso et al. I'd hardly say Kiri or Ellisonde were superstars prior to joining. Apart from Kwia, probably the most star like rider they've signed is van Baarle, and he's for the classics squad.
Their approach in recent years has been to take young riders and improve them. They haven't signed a super star since Cavendish.
Come on mate, almost all of those riders (except Froome himself) were/are known to be great/exceptional talents.
Let's take Poels for example; he had done plenty beforehand to display his talent- he was known and touted to be the biggest Dutch climbing talent since somewhere around 2008. Until 2012 his results were very good for a rider of his age. Then came an extremely bad fall. Not a standard run of the mill fall: he ruptured his spleen, ruptured a kidney, bruised a lung, broke a couple of ribs all in one fall (spent quite a long time in the hospital for all that) - that's potentially career ending; they made a documentary about his revalidation process (it's on youtube I think -; on top of that his father died in the same year etc...). His time with Quickstep, was very successful considering all he had been through; they didn't want to get rid of him (Sky just offered more). The same with Bernal etc; you could hear Michel Wuyts etc, harping on about their gloriousness for ages, even before they were riding for Sky (he was audibly disappointed when he announced they had signed him). They are/were literally in the market for all the greatest talents around; they offered Evenepoel crazy amounts of money (but later denied it when he chose another team, but there were proofs etc...), they did the same (successfully) with Sosa etc... It's not a novel approach; it's scouting coupled with offering very big amounts of money. A large part is just letting them age. Mind you they've done some things I thought to be impossible, like winning a GT with Thomas, he was a very big talent, what he did on the track was astonishing and all that, even so I didn't think he could successfully win a GT. So credit there.
Quickstep is also very successful in discovering the young talents (and winning with them); and most of the time they leave after a couple of seasons and they go on to earn more money and then they dig up new ones. And there are other teams who do similar on a smaller scale.
So his comments today about Sky on talkSport are what?
He's right; he is saying the exact same thing as the sport economist. Their loss doesn't support the development of cycling as a global sport, but it will probably create a more level playing field and more attractive racing. Or, the last part, in his words, " the racing may be better". I also think he was talking mainly about cycling in the U.K.; but I was only able to listen to the 3 minutes short version (still don't think he likes Sky, he's just a good annalist). I'm also not denying their importance for British cycling, but it doesn't translate in a positive manner on a wider scale.
For me the most important thing is attractive racing; not the global interest- off course not on the levels like CX (there globalisation is desperately needed). Entertain me. I would be equally displeased if some other similar super team pops up.
Why do they sponsor cycling do you think? I wouldn't claim to understand advertising / sponsorship, but it's hard to equate sponsoring a GT cycling team with their business of selling cable telly subscriptions (if this is in fact their core business).
From a business and marketing pov it makes little sense to support a cycling team in a non-traditional country (with Sky I think one of the reasons was that one of the sons of Murdoch is a big cycling fan and he lost his seat with the Comcast take-over + they have more than achieved their original objectives); I don't agree with Tinkov a lot but he was right when he said that sponsoring cycling is the equivalent of throwing money in a bottomless pit with little return; they can make changes that will help but that will take a long time...
How's your CX season going?
