Bruyneel on the Future of Cycling

[John the Monkey]

http://www.johanbruyneel.com/blog.html (4.25.09 | The Need for Unity)

AIGCP should unite, "attack" newspapers for publishing articles on doping, organisations that don't let their members race in their events.

NOTE: Translated from a Dutch column in the "Telegraaf" apparently - original here.

 

[yello]

That reads like a critique from someone well and truly within, and with an axe to grind, and so I think it lacks balance. It's all about the team and the riders. Comparisons that don't really hold water, oblique references that read like pop shots. Perhaps it's the translation. I came away thinking 'yes, well you would think that wouldn't you'. Interesting read none-the-less.

 

[Keith Oates]

He has said similar things to that in the past and I feel he is on the right track. However changing the present set up will not be easy and I doubt it will ever happen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[girofan]

Bruyneel is the problem. Not the solution!

 

[John the Monkey]

He's right that the doping stories are what's scaring off the sponsors, imo.

I don't like the conclusion he comes to about it though, personally.

It's an interesting comparison with a piece Jonathan Vaughters wrote in Cycle Sport - his case was that cycling is superb value for money in terms of getting a company name in front of TV cameras, mentioned in news &c &c. His conclusion was that the solution was for teams to be both clean, and seen to be clean, giving the sponsor the advantages of being associated with cycling (cheap (relatively) exposure of their brand) without the downsides (being associated with a farcical Tour De France because of one of the team's riders).

 

[yello]

It read to me like he saw the salvation being with giving more 'power' to the teams. Allowing riders to control more of their own destiny supposedly. But that to me is akin to putting the clichéd kids in charge of the sweet shop. Bruyneel seems to have a problem with regulation.

That said, I think there is some mileage in suggesting that the riders are caught in the middle of the ongoing feud between UCI and ASO. It is a farce when an organising body can disregard the sports supposed governing body! THAT really does need to be resolved.

 

[dellzeqq]

Bruyneel is the problem. Not the solution!

Quite

If you want sponsors you have to stop doping. And the teams need to co-operate to eliminate doping. A conspiracy of silence isn't an option - it isn't going to work any more. The omerta of the Anquetil and Armstrong eras has gone.

This is the commercial reality. It doesn't have to be defended on moral grounds. Bruyneel's interest is in making money. He, of all people, has to accept that he can't go on in the same old way.