Monday, February 4, 2013

Liquigas Swapped for Cannondale as Title Sponsor

   This was posted late last year, but I'm just hearing about it, so much like the hated repost, some of you may be reading this for the second time. Bike Radar just had a great post with a breakdown of the road and time trial bikes that Team Cannondale will be running for 2013. They covered both the EVO and the Slice:

2013 SuperSix EVO Hi-Mod

2013 Slice RS

   What was more interesting to me, as pointed out by the comments section, was that Cannodnale was still running green and blue even though Liquigas was no longer the main sponsor. Whaaaa? So I wondered over to Bicycling.com and read that Cannondale themselves had assumed the title of head sponsor. As the article points out, this adds Cannondale to the short list of teams that are sponsored by bike companies. In the 2012 UCI Pro Tour team list, only BMC is a bicycle manufacturer sponsored team. In fact, you have to go back to 2011 when Cervelo was a co sponsor with Garmin, and before that Bianchi in 2005. 

Bianchi - 2005                Cervelo - 2011                BMC- 2012

   Why the sponsor change? Well, with more and more controversy in cycling, it's reasonable for companies with no stake in the sport other than advertising to look for something more neutral. On the other hand, it takes a lot of money to sponsor a team, and profits for a bicycle company pale in comparison to an energy provider. In any case, great to see Cannondale step up and keep their team together!

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