Nicole Cooke to ride for British National Team in 2010

by civetta on Feb 5, 2010 12:26 PM EST Comment 22 comments

British Cycling have announced that Nicole Cooke will ride for the British National Team this season following the collapse of the former Team Nürnberger with which Cooke signed in the summer. After discussions with Dave Brailsford (in his capacity as Performance Director of British Cycling), the Olympic and former world road race champion has agreed a programme of races and will join the British squad for a training camp in Mallorca on 3 March.

According to a quote on the British Cycling website, Cooke received confirmation on Tuesday from Team Nürnberger manager Alexander Oppelt's lawyer that the team with which she has a "valid uncancelled two year contract" no longer exists. Where that leaves other riders seems unclear. The team ran into difficulties after a new sponsorship deal with Skyter, a charter yacht company, fell through.

The British Cycling piece ends with a nice bit of editorializing from website editor Larry Hickmott, who suggests that the UCI are failing in their responsibility towards women's cycling and should perhaps enforce greater integration between men's and women's teams. That's particularly interesting when you consider that Brailsford is now once again running a de facto team for Cooke, when not a few people thought that a women's team should have been part of the Team Sky project all along (and for a drop in the ocean of their budget).

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Thanks, good summary

and I would applaud more team setups like THR/CTT.

by tedvdw on Feb 5, 2010 12:36 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

ouch!

Isn’t cycling too painful for women?

by gravelroad on Feb 5, 2010 2:56 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

If you've seen team after team collapse, race after race cancelled, & you find it almost impossible to make a living

I suspect there’s a point at which it starts to become very painful indeed.

by civetta on Feb 5, 2010 6:50 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

what about Team Sky

Still can’t believe with all the hype and money involved there (and Brailsford!) they didn’t manage to put together a women’s team. I’m sure there’s lots behind the scenes I don’t know about but I’m still disappointed. A real wasted opportunity there, what with Cooke being free.

by smaryka on Feb 5, 2010 3:41 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Exactly

and even if they’d just stepped in to take over title sponsorship for the old Nurnberger team it would have cost roughly the price of one of the Team Sky buses.

by Monty. on Feb 5, 2010 6:35 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

The irony is, of course,

that since Sky also sponsor British Cycling, she’s going to have SKY emblazoned all over her jersey anyway. So why on earth not do it properly, form a proper team, spend a couple of quid, have a nice launch, a bit of a fanfare (which, since Cooke’s known as an Olympic gold medalist, you would at least get something of here in Britain) & do something to actually support the sport? It’s so blindingly obvious that even the BC website editor’s taking pot shots at them, at least by implication.

by civetta on Feb 5, 2010 6:47 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Same situation in Holland with Rabobank

Sponsoring a men’s team with a huge budget, lots of related projects, like all the national selections, but no women’s team.

by tedvdw on Feb 5, 2010 6:49 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Yeah, I think I've probably had a bit of a moan about that one too ;-)

by civetta on Feb 5, 2010 6:51 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

But being an Aussie he can get away with it a bit more

one of the reasons there are so many Australian women riding in the pro peloton is that a lot of them get some sort of personal sponsorship/grant from the government, or at least at one or two steps removed. I suspect that it’s not a lot, but at leat they don’t need to rely on their salary for things like food and rent. BC does something similar for the juniors, but I’m not sure how much they support the older riders. And to be fair there’s a limit on how long you can ask someone to live on fifty quid a week.

by Monty. on Feb 5, 2010 7:49 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Sponsors don't see a return

Remember a few days ago on Twitter? His response was basically: why would we do that.

by tedvdw on Feb 5, 2010 6:47 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

It's sort of unclear to me, though,

what exactly Sky want from cycling. & furthermore there’s the (I think anyway) conflict of interest between Brailsford’s two jobs.

by civetta on Feb 5, 2010 6:49 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

What does any sponsor want?

(who is not directly involved in the cycling business). Exposure, image building.

by tedvdw on Feb 5, 2010 6:50 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

And might I add: on a budget

Apparently there are huge exposure returns in men’s cycling, when that is given monetary value.

by tedvdw on Feb 5, 2010 6:57 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I suppose it depends where Sky see themselves expanding next.

I’m sure you’re right, but actually I suspect it’s usually personal enthusiasm on the part of the chief exec or whoever & when he (generally he) goes, the sponsorship goes too. (That’s my own experience of getting sponsorship for arts projects, obviously on a much smaller scale than this but still.) James Murdoch is said to have got the bike bug at some point, so maybe that & dreaming of the Tour de France & associating themselves with BC’s success is all there is to it).

by civetta on Feb 5, 2010 7:01 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Adding

a lot of the time when I’e got sponsorship for things, exposure hasn’t come into it, rather it’s having something nice to stick in the annual report & impress the shareholders under the heading of “corporate social responsibility” or whatever. You would’ve thought that sort of thing would have been right up Rabobank’s street (I know being a co-op they don’t have shareholders per se, but you know the sort of thing).

by civetta on Feb 5, 2010 7:10 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Re: Rabo

He mentioned “we are already doing so much” like participation events, kids events, junior racers, ’cross & ATB development team, Conti team, national selections. I guess they think they have enough feel-good projects and additional ones would need to give substantial return compared to what they already get. That seems tough.

Just speculating.

by tedvdw on Feb 5, 2010 7:32 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

with sky

that’s definitely the case i think. in britain at the mo, businesses are falling over backwards to make themselves look in touch/community friendly/whatever…

"well...you live in england so: you love the rain. loves the queen. hates cycling. based on mr bean had a tremendous amount of humour. all ride in a mini cooper. all getting drunk before the age of 12. getting drunk at least 3 times a day."- frinking, 7/9/09

by benrazor on Feb 5, 2010 8:40 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

a lot of the sky guff is about increasing participation in sport

which makes the lack of a women’s team all the more perplexing to me

and given the quality of British women’s cycling at the moment I’d imagine the advertising exposure would be pretty good – even if they could only get two of Cooke, Armitstead and Pooley they’re going to pick up a few events probably some world champs and olympics medals too (albeit more likely on the track)

by thebongolian on Feb 6, 2010 3:29 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

"when not a few people thought"

nicely understated :)

by benrazor on Feb 5, 2010 4:30 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

It looks like

the rest of the riders on Nurnberger are riding unpaid for now, in the hope that something will turn up, which brings them into line with most of the French and Italian women. Quite a few of the Germans are mentioned of from time to time as Police Officers, which I suspect is the German way of providing semi-official support for sports, just like the Italian Fiamme Azzurre and the Belgian Rose Contracts.

by Monty. on Feb 5, 2010 6:41 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

I bet that if some real effort were put into...

…publicizing women’s cycling and making even close to as easy to view the races and follow the sport, at least at the elite level, the return on investment would be at least as good as it is for men’s cycling. Women’s sports, when presented well, get audiences. This isn’t debatable at this point. So the constant string of complaints that there’s no audience is a purely self-fulfilling prophesy.

What they mean is, ‘we don’t want to bother developing the sport for women.’ Assholes.

by Ed K on Feb 5, 2010 10:24 PM EST reply actions 0 recs