Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Mergers & Acquisitions

Found this to be very interesting bicycling news: RadioShack & Leopard-Trek are merging teams.

Some of the funnier comments i've read about the merger are the complaints that Levi Leipheimer isn't included in the new team. Seems that he opted to leave and join the also newly-merged Omega-Pharma/Quickstep team; there is too much competing talent for him to be considered a leader if he had stayed with Radio-Shack/Leopard-Trek.

What i find humorous is that Levi would be considered a "leader" on any team competing at the Grand Tours. He's a good rider, don't get me wrong, but he is not good enough to be the leader and have a team built around him in support of GC wins — except for races here in the US.

Building a team around Levi would be like BMC building a team around George Hincapie. I love George, highly respect him and his talent, but he is a leader of the support group, the riders supporting the GC contenders, not the person expected to win the race. Levi is exactly the same.

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