(except in cases where riders buy themselves out of contracts)

and I tend to come down on your side of it. Teams that aren’t full-fledged “feeder teams” (it’s amazing how nearly every team has one – BMC actually has two) stand an excellent chance of losing their top riders all the same from one season to the next. It’s another reason Vaughters’ team is such an incredible story. They went from being a podunk US team to one of the top 18 in three years. The only other team I can think of that worked their way through the ranks like that was Lavenu’s, and it took way longer. Nowadays everybody in the top 18 just starts there, with the cashola allowing them to skip every rung of the ladder beforehand. Vaughters has long argued for some semblance of a meritocracy in cycling, and this would be the simplest way, but I still doubt it’ll ever happen. A sponsor will pony up the bucks to buy whatever riders they want/need, but will they pony up compensation to the teams from which they poached those riders? Unlikely.

not too old, speaks English, climbs well…