You can pretty much write into the books right now: not only will Pegasus Sports miss out on a Professional Continental license for next year, it may not even exist at all. This will be a crushing blow for cycling in Australia. For many years now, many avid recreational cyclists have been staying up, watching the Tour de France and other european races, just wishing we had our own team to support.
It's been bandied about before, an Australian pro cycling team. A few years ago, I remember reading in the paper that a group of elite businessmen were looking at funding a team based in Australia. Chris White's Pegasus Sports outfit put forward the first tangible opportunity and for a while, there was real hope. Some strong and very well known cyclists have signed on (Robbie McEwen, Robbie Hunter, Svein Tuft, Daryl Impey), an announcement of a major sponsor was due during the World Championships and the team held a training camp up in Queensland in November.
A lot of people had really high hopes that it would exist and, even more, get a ProTour license for 2011. I was always a little sceptical, especially when the sponsorship announcement didn't occur. But this did not contain my excitement. Even after they were denied ProTour status, everyone was certain they would gain a ProConti license. Last week, they were denied this, the UCI citing incomplete documentation relating to administration issues. Again, Pegasus assured everyone that things were fine, that they would iron out the problems and resubmit their documentation on December 15th, the extension granted to them by the UCI. This morning, there has been reports that Chris White has announced that the team will not be competing next year at all, although the information is still a bit unreliable at this stage and nothing formal has been announced. Nevertheless, still with no major sponsor and with reports riders have been looking elsewhere, it seems pretty obvious that Pegasus is going to fall flat on its face.
This highlights an increasing problem in cycling: garnering sponsorship is nigh on impossible for upstart teams. GEOX has been plagued by speculation that because they were also denied a ProTour license, their sponsorship would be pulled. With all this uncertainty surrounding the status of teams and companies very apprehensive of being associated with doping allegations, coming across a keen sponsor is extremely difficult. Bjarne Riis' Team Saxo Bank for instance had some of the biggest names in the sport and a great list of results for 2010 but even Riis is struggling to keep Saxo Bank onboard, particularly if (or more likely, when) Alberto Contador gets suspended. Even Team RadioShack, the team part-owned by Lance Armstrong is struggling to get the company to sign on in the future, following the departure by Armstrong after the 2011 Tour Down Under.
It's very disappointing that this potentially face-changing proposition is looking increasingly likely to fail but I must admit, I'm hardly surprised. In a sport that will never attract the following of AFL, NRL, A-League, etc; in a country that has traditionally struggled to attract major corporate sponsorship to big sporting events (Australian Open golf, for example), it was always going to be a tough uphill battle. We can probably take solace that the Australian cricket team is performing so badly that the damage sustained by these announcements will be minimal.
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