2013 Pro-cycling season thread

to be fair, (fair? paf!) Euskatel are a fairly local sponsor with almost 20 years in the sport (their palmares are mostly local to Spain too with a few giro stages to mix it up) , SKY have been megabucks-buy-all-the-things since day one... the pretence of being 'British' was only in the sense of buying, eh i mean, putting a British rider on the Tour #1 podium... caveat emptor. It's exciting having the Real Madrids and Discov... I mean eh LA Lakers, every sport has them-means there are more underdogs. As in, their budget is 10 times greater than the next poor sods-it's what the Brits do best in setting up a one-sided conflict then winning it convincingly enough that we get to boast about it for at least four or five decades after the money's dried up and we're shit at it again.

Maybe if there wasn't such close links with British Cycling that pre-dated the formation of Team Sky. There is a lot of hand-in-glove stuff, really Team Sky and Team GB are interchangeable in a lot of ways. Look at all the favours done Geraint and Cav for the Olympics, for example