Looks like Alejandro Valverde will not be donning a magenta jersey after all. Now for my Stephan Colbert moment: Just as I predicted earlier, the Valverde move to T-Mobile was not going to happen. Team manager Eusebio Unzué was able to press the sponsors to extend deals or put in more money. There was enough to give the Green Bullet a solid home for the next four years at more than 9 million dollars (according to cyclingnews.com). That is very close to the rumored T-Mobile deal.
Details of the deal have to be finalized but the Caisse D’Epargne team presentation next week will definitely feature Valverde.
The on-again off again, confirmed but not confirmed move to T-Mobile is not a dead deal yet. The story keeps being denied, but then fresh reports come back to show that there just may be a link between Alejandro Valverde moving to T-Mobile for a price of $10 million Euros for the next three years. This would make the Green Bullet the highest paid professional cyclist in the Pro Peloton.
Caisse D’Epargne-Illes Balears has been reported to be in a tight situation regarding sponsorship cash. A nice $2 Million Euro buyout may help keep the team afloat. T-Mobile needs a guaranteed rising star since they put all their effort behind Michael Rogers who may or may not pan out as a stage racer.
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Black appears to be the new blue for 2007. Team kit designs for the pro peloton seem to follow common trends as each team has their own variation on a popular theme. The previoulsy trend was a blue team kit that started getting popular in the 1990s when cyclist realized they did not always have to wear black shorts. For a while it seemed as though just about every team sported a mostly blue colored team kit. It was tough to tell some teams apart. The most confusing moment came in the 2005 Paris-Roubaix when Juan Antonio Flecha (Fassa Bortolo), George Hincapie (Discovery Channel) and Tom Boonen (Quick-Step) where in a final break away. Their respective team kits looked so similar that it was tough to tell the riders apart from the helicopter. Now the team kit designers love affair with blue has come to an end as black seems to be the new popular color.
With Caisse D’Epargne and Team CSC daring to sport the almost all black look, many teams are following through and going dark too.
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The new kit is slowly coming out for 2006. We had Saunier Duval ruin their understated kit by including many chickens.
Next we have Quick Step going for a US Postal style look. They darkened the blue and removed the white sections. Now Casse d’Epargne-Balears (that rolls off the tough does’t it?) released one of their new jerseys. It seems that since Casse D’Epargne and Illes Balears sponsor the team 60/40 repsectively, they have the team wear completely different jerseys depending on where they race. The look of the Casse D’Epargne dominant jersey is above and looks very stylish with black as the dominant color with a carbon like pattern. Nice work. Will the black jersey translate well in the sweltering July heat?
Grande Ciclismo
