I'm just going to come right out and say it, I'm anti the Garmin-Cervlo merger. I read an interesting piece a few weeks ago, which I'm too lazy to find and post a link for you, describing just how bad of a decision it was for Cervelo to start their own team and how much more successful they were as the bike supplier for Riss Cycling Inc. (CSC and then Saxo Bank). What most bike companies need to remember, and what most pro level teams always know, is one high end carbon frame is just as good as another. Pro teams need bikes but they don't need your bike. Obviously most consumers forget this fact which is obvious by fat dudes riding $5,000+ carbon frames because their man crush won a big race on it. But I'm sure if you could get Fabian Cancellara off the record to tell you what the best bike he's ever ridden is, he'd have a tough time narrowing it down. As they say in the industry, they're all laterally stiff while vertically compliant.
This little test team that Cervelo put together was mostly a bust. To me it seemed like they could never quite decide if they were going to be a classics team, where they had reasonable success, if you could success as a lot of podium finishes but never the top step, and pretty dismal grand tours, thanks in a large to Carlos Sastre, who apparently thinks just showing up is good enough to meet contract obligations. When you're the bike company and you decide to step out on your own you better win some races, else, what's the point of funding it from both sides? For the most part, Cervelo failed to do that, which is why they are now closing up shop and moving back into a role that makes more sense for them in the market place, bike supplier, not team management.
So, while I think Cervelo is doing a smart thing by cutting losses, I don't think the Garmin merger is the right fit. It seems to me that all the high level Cervelo riders who are now going to be donning argyle lycra have their rival already on the team's roster. I read the piece where Vaughters basically says that Hushovd and Farrar will be complimentary to one another, but I don't buy it. Is Hushovd now going to give up his attempt to win points jersey's to lead out Farrar? Doubtful. So who is Garmin going to hang their hat on? They seem to have made a huge investment in branding Tyler Farrar as the future of that team, but for the most part he's come up sort of short in grand tour sprints. Sure he's got a few, but not enough wins to wonder why they went looking for another sprinter. But Hushovd? Anybody who watched the Tour de France this year could see that his best sprint days are behind him. Pure top end speed just isn't coming out of the legs of the God of Thunder anymore and if you want to beat pure sprinters and win points jerseys, you better do better than a consistent 10th place bunch finish and getting in the early break for scraps on the road. That strategy worked for Hushovd in 2009 but he was faster then and Cav got a goose egg on one stage. In 2010 Hushovd used the same strategy and ended up 3rd in that competition. It just seems that by adding all of Cervelo's top level riders you create a delima over who you're bringing to the biggest races of year and who's working for who. I don't see either of these guys, at least honestly, behind the scenes, taking a step back and saying the other guy deserves to be the leader. When Garmin brought Julian Dean and then Robbie Hunter over to lead out Farrar it was pretty obvious that these guys, while once top level tour sprinters were now past their prime and were happy to take on a mentor role to guide the young talent. I don't see Hushovd taking that same approach.
And, this doesn't even bring up the problem of Haussler. Where the hell does he fit into the equation? 2010 was basically a bust for him, which was just royally capped by being left off the Australian World's team despite giving up his German citizenship to ride for Australia in Australia. He's been injured all year so who knows what 2011 will hold. Maybe Haussler was a one hit wonder and this question will answer itself. But if he comes back strong in 2011, that's going to also cause some scheduling issues.
I don't know where I think these guys should have gone. Maybe as an American I think that Cervelo's biggest market is America so sponsoring a Milram or FDJeux wouldn't make much sense and the other American teams are already locked into bike deals. I also realize it's easy for me to sit at my computer and say these guys won't work together and this and that but I am not the guy writing the pay checks. Vaughters seems like a really smart guy from both a business and racing stance. While I disagree with this merger, they must see value, so we'll see what happens. I do think this clearly points to the fact that Garmin will no longer even pretend to think Christian Van deVelde (sp?) can win a major grand tour. They now have the roster of a classics team who will go to grand tours to support sprinters and stage hunters. I actually think this strategy is a really smart move for them as a team, but that does not alleviate the concerns that I mentioned before. When you've got this many talented people who are all trying to win the same races, somebody's not going to be happy. Maybe this new Garmin-Cervelo team will be the modern version of Mapei. I hear Cancellara might be leaving Saxo Bank. Maybe he wants to ride an R3 again...
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