Cycling and Loyalty

To a large extent, a cyclist has to be loyal and trustworthy to their teammates, for the team to cooperate and function as a winning squad; this is very much how the cookie crumbles.

But to what extent is loyalty owed?

Is it to the extent that in football, the legends of the game are expected to either stay with the team they started with, or to return back like a homecoming?

In cycling, the moving of teams is a natural progression and the way I see it, the natural cycle of how a rider is developing, because generally they move squads for either one of two things; one, money, or two, their role is changing.

And the latter is what applies to Mark Cavendish’s right hand man and perpetual second place finisher to the Manx missile, Mark Renshaw.

After HTC Highroad pulled sponsorship some of today’s best riders were up for grabs, and Renshaw moved to Dutch based team Rabobank.

Whereas Cavendish is rumoured to have gone to Sky for a whopping 2.8 million a year! 

Though, the move has still not been confirmed yet. if anything, I can imagine we’ll just see Cav in Sky colours, rather than a press release the way it’s going.

Renshaw will be the key sprinter on the Dutch team, a bit of a change up for the Aussie who plays a very gracious second fiddle.

But someone a little less than gracious (though others might class this as emotional) Is 

Cavendish’s recalling of his reaction to Renshaw was moving to a new squad without him, describing it as a hurtful act, lacking loyalty.

Lacking loyalty? Sure, they rode side by side to god knows how many stage wins together but times change and the a rider will ultimately have to take a gamble when the opportunity arises.

On Cavendish’s twitter he has claimed that the interview was taken out of context and hi back with the statement that “People will believe any spin put on a story. Actions speak MUCH louder than OUT OF CONTEXT” (courtesy of twitter.com)