British ProTour squad

iainf72
iainf72 Posts: 15,784
edited July 2007 in Pro race
Surprised no one has mentioned this yet

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/New ... 28231.html

What do people think?

I don't think it will work. And I can't see the point. Sure, there are some good guys coming through but there is no where near the depth of talent to get 30 guys up to PT level into a squad by 2009? Absolutely, get a team together and maybe feed some of the products of BCF into it but it would make a lot of sense to have some experienced international guys.

All the good english speakers tend to get snapped up by T-Mob and now it sounds like Slipstream too.

Mind you, I also think countries are so 19'th century :lol:
Fckin' Quintana … that creep can roll, man.

Comments

  • afx237vi
    afx237vi Posts: 12,630
    Quite frankly, that's ridiculous. 30 riders by the start of 2009? Has anyone told them we're half way through 2007 already?

    Fair enough, a predominately British team would great, but aiming for the Tour so soon is crazy. They should go down the Slipstream route and aim for a pro-continental slot first, start racing week in week out in Europe and go from there.

    It would be very odd to have a top British brand name in the bunch, though. Team Tesco? Nah, that just isn't right.
  • GroupOfOne
    GroupOfOne Posts: 21
    Personally I agree with Dave Brailsford (and Ken Livingston) that we do need a British ProTour (or top level Continental - think Selle-Italia, Panaria, Tinkoff) team.

    But, we don't need an entirely British team. Yes have a British sponsor, yes have some British riders, but please lets no get so overly patriotic that we construct a team of riders solely from the UK. After all surely we want any team to stand a chance of winning the biggest races (and without meaning to be disrespectful) not just stages within them. Also would riding alongside other 'foreign' professionals not also help the development of some younger British riders (providing those professionals were carefully selected so they didn't bring too many unwanted 'experiences').

    Also why wait till 2009? If people are that serious and sponsors are interested, then there's still plenty of time to get things up and running for next season. It's normally only at this time we begin to hear the rumours about new teams or rider changes for next season (E.g. Slipstream and the potential Weber team) so why couldn't the project be got off the ground sooner? Why wait until potential sponsors and media interest has been lost to Euro 2008 or England reclaiming the rugby world cup :wink:

    Plus of course....will the ProTour even be around in 2009?

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