August is gone, and now we start the usual end-of-season shuffling, where we wait until the music stops and everyone moves round a team.
Except that this year, there are a couple of significant obstacles: loss of teams, reduction in numbers.
Firstly, the Cannondale Chipmunks are closing this year, as they are merging with Garmin to become Cannondale-Slipstream. It's an odd thing about takeovers, that it's often the "smaller" partner whose name remains.. looking at it logically, you would say that Garmin are folding, and Cannondale are taking over their remains, surely?
I know a lot of people are very loyal to the Garmin argyle, but I'm hoping the Cannondale kit is the one that remains, as it's so distinctive and easy to spot. And I like their way of putting a Nationals distinction into the stripes on the back, which does not interfere with the uniform look of the kit. I personally hate the way that Stinkoff have ruined their line-up with the faded red Denmark national kit of Valgren. And I hate to say it, but Sky have done the same with having Kenyack in his tasteless white Nationals jersey. Don't do it, guys! Even slapping a big old "flag" across the back is better than ruining the entire kit, but the Cannondale stripe is, to my eyes, better.
Secondly, Brian Cookson has announced that he wants to reduce the numbers of riders per team. Stupid idea, Brian! With fewer teams, and fewer sponsors, surely it makes sense to have more riders per team, not fewer?
We already have some teams unable to send a full roster to every race - even Sky have been sending out short teams, for heavens sake - and there seem to be more crashes than ever before, not to mention this weird Movement for Credible Cycling group and their "your Cortisol levels are too low so you aren't fit to race" restriction. They seem to have come from nowhere, have no legal or UCI-backed influence, yet can tell teams to pull riders from races with no compensation or appeal. Weird.
Anyway, with all this going on, many of the teams are already reducing their numbers: it used to be something like 28 and a couple of neo-pros, I think, and it's going down to about 24.
This means that teams won't be able to support riders who are not contributing: they won't be able to have as many neos, they'll lose their older riders, and anyone having a streak of injury or illness - well, they just won't be able to carry any such riders, any more.
It was announced recently that Frankie has been given a new 2-year contract with Trek, but there is deafening silence about Andy. Does this mean that Andy won't have a contract?
Not necessarily - I interpret this to mean that Trek are drip-feeding transfer and contract info, in order to squeeze as much publicity as possible, which is perfectly reasonable and is not necessarily bad for Andy.
We all know that they - Andy and Frankie - have always said publicly that they will not race for different teams, and it seems unlikely that Frankie would have signed for Trek if they were refusing to give Andy any sort of contract. On the other hand, Frankie is a family man with two children and (no matter how much we don't believe it) a past doping conviction. He might not have much of a choice. Personally I think that if he'd been forced to accept a contract without Andy, he would have said something about it... so I am hopeful that there will be another announcement soon.
Looking at it logically, though, Andy's knee injury was described at the time as "possibly career-ending" so if I were Trek, I would be waiting to see if he can get back on the bike before making a contract, and if I were Andy, I would completely understand.
Normally, before Brian Cookson announced the shrinking of the team size, I would have been promoting the idea that Trek would gain significant benefit from having Andy on the team, even if he never won another race: he's a great ambassador for the sport, he's a "good guy", he's a three-time TdF podium finisher, he's a legend in the sport, he has a terrific fan-base, and I would have thought that any race organiser would be delighted to have him.
But I'm not so sure now, how that would work, with fewer riders on each team. Can they afford to give a space to someone on this basis?
On the other hand, how many times have we seen someone have a terrific season and win everything, then completely fail to win a single race the following year? Costa, Cadel Evans, Philly Gilly, Wiggo, come to mind. BMC must have been furious, to have spent all those millions on Gilbert, only to see him fail and fail and fail. Andy, on the other hand, is probably not going to be terribly expensive for Trek to keep.. and there is every chance that he'll recover well.
Let's hope so, eh?!
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