As one of the most successful motorcades in the history of the Tour de France, the American Discovery Channel motorcade will be disbanded! This is the exact news from the new york Times. "The best team in the history of the Tour de France is about to collapse. It once belonged to Armstrong's team, and it was also the team that trained this year's Tour de France champion. However, the shadow of banned drugs made the Tour de France lose its original aura. Now sponsors want to stay away from the sport, and Armstrong's team can't find new sponsors. "
No one doubts that the Discovery Channel team is one of the most successful and influential teams in the Tour de France and even in the history of cycling. Together with all the teams, this team has created countless glories: Armstrong won seven Tour de France trophies here, and this year's Tour de France champion Cantador and the third runner-up Rafi Moore are drivers of Discovery Channel. Last year's Tour de France champion Landis also fought in this team. This team, founded in 1989, has won an Italian tour, a Spanish tour and several American championships in addition to the Tour de France.
Bill stapp Leighton, general manager of Shunfeng Sports Company, admitted in a statement, "This is a difficult decision, even more difficult than winning the Tour de France. We have discussed various opportunities with many companies to keep the team developing, but getting new sponsors is the most important thing. But in the end, unfortunately, we can only choose to end all these negotiations. " Armstrong also issued a statement that he would shift his business focus to other sports. "Before you can see us return to cycling, this sport really needs to be improved under a unified standard."
Even Armstrong, the "car god", doesn't want to be mixed with bicycles, which shows what kind of survival crisis riding is facing now.
Bicycle faces survival crisis.
Although the focus of this year's Tour de France is anti-doping, from Rasmussen to vinokourov, from Sinkowitz who voluntarily confessed to Contado, the Tour de France is full of scandals related to doping from beginning to end.
Everyone knows the ambiguous relationship between the Tour de France and doping, but it is the first time in the history of the Tour de France that drivers like Asner of Switzerland and Coffeydis of France were forced to retire collectively because of their positive drug tests. After two German TV stations stopped covering the Tour de France, traditional sponsors were also considering quitting, and the trust of the Tour de France had fallen to the lowest point since 104. According to a poll conducted by German newspaper Bild last week, as many as 83% people once hoped that the current Tour de France would stop immediately.
It's not just the Tour de France that is facing the crisis. The future of cycling is in jeopardy.
Whether the World Road Cycling Championships held in Stuttgart from September 26th to 30th this year can be held as scheduled was once in doubt. In the context of the Olympic Games' efforts to "slim down", bicycles may even be expelled from the Olympic Games. An Olympic Committee member who asked not to be named once told the media that "cycling is likely to be excluded from the Olympic Games" because of repeated doping scandals. Although jacques rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, later said that banning bicycles from entering the Olympic Games was not the solution, it still did not rule out the possibility that relatively clean events such as softball, rugby and karate "crowded out" bicycles from entering the Olympic Games.
The sponsors are disheartened.
Due to the constant scandal of the Tour de France this year, adidas, Audi, T-MOBILE and other heavyweight sponsors of the Tour de France are considering not sponsoring this event.
After the doping scandal broke out, Adidas announced that it would stop sponsoring Deutsche Telekom. A director of Adidas revealed: "We have always taken a very clear attitude towards stimulants. We are very sorry about the Sinkowitz incident, and we are seriously considering whether to terminate the cooperation with Deutsche Telekom in advance. " Adidas is one of the main sponsors of Deutsche Telekom, and his withdrawal means that Deutsche Telekom will lose nearly one million euros every year.
The sponsors of Credit Agricole France and Coffeydis France also indicated that they would no longer sponsor the Tour de France. Cofidis' sponsorship contract with the Tour de France expired in 2008, but in the 11th stage, after Italian driver Moreni was found to be taking doping, Cofidis withdrew from the race. Bohr, the general manager of the company, said, "This incident has had a very serious impact on the team." The French Savings Bank, which invested as much as 2,654,380,000 euros in the Tour de France, said that it would redistribute the investment, and the French preview insurance team also claimed that it would reconsider the company's strategy after the Tour de France.
Rasmussen's parent team, Rabobank Netherlands, also said that they would consider whether to continue sponsoring the team. "If there is a major event, we will reconsider the sponsorship. The Rasmussen incident is what we call a' major event'." On August 4th, Roanoje, the team manager, announced his resignation, which was obviously related to the Rasmussen incident.
The end of the "golden age"
From a commercial point of view, if a sport needs more attention and sponsorship, it needs wonderful scenes and big stars that attract people's attention. Sports with good image and high attention among the public are naturally the first choice for sponsors.
In the past 65,438+00 years, the Tour de France, as the epitome of cycling and the acme of its development, has dedicated a series of superstars such as Duran, ulrich, pantani and Armstrong and countless classic scenes that can be recorded in sports history. In 2002, more than 40 TV stations broadcast live, and more than 3,000 journalists reported the Tour de France, which was as famous as the World Cup in Korea and Japan. Some heavyweight multinational companies also directly sponsored the Tour de France or organized their own teams to participate in the competition. Discovery Channel received an invitation from the U.S. Postal Service at a high price to pay attention to the growing influence of cycling in the United States and even the world under the guidance of Armstrong miracle.
During this period, the Tour de France and even the whole cycling movement ushered in the "golden age" of commercial development. However, the abuse of stimulants ruined the future of the Tour de France. This year's Tour de France lost a lot of tourists, only 2.2 billion people, which can't be compared with the ratings of 30 billion people in the World Cup in Germany. Obviously, the drug ban incident has made the audience lose their appetite for cycling.
In this context, the departure of Discovery Channel is not unexpected, or even just a matter of time. There is no American driver like Armstrong in the current team. After Armstrong retired, Discovery Channel continued to cooperate with the team at an annual cost of140,000 US dollars because the team is still expected to achieve good results in the Tour de France. However, the deterioration of the image of cycling, especially the fact that the new Tour de France champion Contado trained by the team was suspected of taking banned drugs, consumed the last patience of the top management of Discovery Channel. In addition, Discovery Channel is an educational channel, and its public image in the United States has always been good. Its team is suspected of using sports drugs, which will definitely have a negative impact on its image. Therefore, the departure of Discovery Channel is not like the departure of the US Postal Service, but a vote of no confidence in the future of cycling. The dissolution of this most brilliant team is actually an elegy of the "golden age" of cycling in the past decade.