I wanted to write a blog about the demise of HighRoad, but it’s too depressing. Whatever you may think of Bob Stapleton (and certainly I have some positive and some negative thoughts), I’ll remind you of two things:
- He was and is a huge supporter of women’s cycling. Even now that the team will fold, he’ll find a way to keep the women’s program going. I’m sure of it.
- He took a team that had become a mess in the public eye and turned it into an exciting team with lots of antics on the road and very few off it.
Maybe next week I’ll muster the energy to go into the lessons learned. For now, I hope you all enjoy a good ride on the weekend.
gerard.cc 
August 5, 2011 at 15:02
It amazes me reading that the team generated $400 million worth of revenue for HTC and they didn’t want to carry on, or anyone wanted to come along. Plus also Cav, Mark Renshaw etc etc will move on with massive fanfare, but I feel for the backroom staff, I hope they get helped with finding new jobs like when you had to fold Cérvelo TT
August 5, 2011 at 15:50
Neil, $400M REVENUE was not generated, for HTC. Revenue = sales. Over the team’s history this is what they claimed they generated in exposure for their sponsors.
But these figure are always hard to calculate or prove, but more to the point, you can do $400m worth of advertising, but if you aren’t generating billions in revenue from it, it doesn’t matter.
August 5, 2011 at 16:15
interesting theory by inrng: http://inrng.com/2011/08/highroad-pro-cycling/
is it possible they just lived off the T-Mobile payout and never really had a financially supportive title sponsor? Gerard, you would have a better idea about if this would even be possible.
August 5, 2011 at 19:13
It’s a shame that winning regularly doesn’t seem to translate to stability in cycling. I think JV has some interesting ideas on that. OTOH we’ll now have a battle of good/mediocre trains instead of one super train dominating. Breaking up the sprint monopoly?
FWIW, I’d never heard of HTC prior to the team and now I own one and really like it. If I were RadioShack, I’d switch horses.
August 8, 2011 at 20:45
This made me laugh… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSE0iW61WOo