There is no place in cycling for "individual" sponsors

More reports in the news today about Stinkoff: they are parting company with their sponsor, Mr Tinkov, owner of Tinkoff Bank.

I mentioned the other day that they were having difficulties with their negotiations, and I commented on the strange similarity between Mr Tinkov and Mr Becca: both rich, both wanting to sponsor cycling because "they like it" rather than as a business deal: both failing to understand some of the basic elements of cycling, both failing to understand the difference between sponsorship and investment, and both assuming that they can stick their big noses into the way the team is run, not realising that sponsorship is different from ownership.

So, Uncle Bjarne has proved himself to be a man by calling a halt to the negotiations - go, Bjarne! Do you know, I am starting to like him again.

The report today throws up some interesting angles to the affair - I didn't realise that Mr Tinkov has had his fingers in several other, lower level, cycling teams, all of which have come to sticky ends.

Lovely quote from the article:

"Tyler Hamilton also rode on the team [Mr Tinkov's 2007/8 conti team] and said last year that he was told doping was allowed; Tinkov denied this as being the case."

Well, he would, wouldn't he? But this does shed an interesting light on Uncle Bjarne's comment:

“Most importantly, we disagree on how the team should be run.”

Without doping, possibly?

There was also an unbelievable reference to Mr Tinkov and his tweets: I rarely go on Twitter so I haven't read any of them myself, but the report states:

"Tinkov’s Twitter account gathered a lot of attention during the Tour, and not only because of his tweets about the team. The Russian got into abrasive exchanges with several people, using sexist, misogynistic and homophobic language, and also said that he considered that the team’s leader Alberto Contador was overpaid and undertrained."

OK, now I'm feeling sorry for Contador. Talk about "wash your dirty linen in public", blimey, this rates up there with Mr Becca and RadioShambles with their approach to motivating the team.

 I know that pro cycling is desperate for more sponsors, but I think the line has to be drawn at rich individuals, don't you? They just don't understand how cycling works - it is different from every other sport, not least in being one that cannot be funded by ticket sales in any way whatsoever, unfortunately. Well, fortunately, for us, as it's one of the very few sports where you can just go along and watch it for free, anywhere you like, and where you can (if you wish) get really close to the participants at starts and finishes.

So good luck to Uncle Bjarne, yar boo sucks to Mr Tinkov, and a clear warning to all of the peloton - don't go to his new, alleged 5-year-commitment team (if he ever gets it off the ground) or you will find yourself in the same position as our Leopards: failure to produce big wins immediately will mean he pulls out after a year or two, fails to pay you,  flogs you off to some other team,  then continues to interfere for as long as he possible can, undermining the confidence of his riders and quite possibly ruining their futures as well - and by that I am referring to the Mr-Becca-driven stance of RadioShambles, to sack Frankie 10 days before the end of his ban, thus making it look as though they suddenly believe him guilty of doping.