CTT Shutting the Doors

After a series of ominous events in the last few weeks, Cervelo Test Team has announced that they will be folding after just 2 years of competition. The official reason stated by Cervelo company is that the new UCI rules would mean more costs than the sponsor can afford to handle, so they decided to shut the doors. There have also been rumors recently floating around that Cervelo was interested in becoming a sponsor on the Garmin team, replacing Transitions. The real trouble began a few weeks back, when team headliner Carlos Sastre announced his move to Team Geox at the end of the season. After Sastre left, the team made no move to bring in a replacement team leader (and there were quite a few available), immediately raising the red alert across the cycling world. Things appeared to have stabilized over the weeks until the final news that broke the camel's back was announced late yesterday. It was reported by numerous sources that the team's 2 top sprinters Haussler and Hushovd were close to a move to Garmin-Transitions. (Even though that would make NO SENSE from Garmin's standpoint, who already has enough sprinters to conduct a bunch sprint of their own) And thus was the end of ol' Cervelo Test Team after just 2 brief years in the business, with the only remaining question being "Did the riders leave because the team was folding or was the team folding because the riders were leaving?" Either can be a logical explanation, though I am inclined to believe that it was the first one. I wouldn't rush to call the "Cervelo experiment" (because it was indeed just that, an experiment) a failure, as it did enjoy a reasonable amount of success in its brief existence. This is just another example of the challenges faced by a modern day cycling team, and the ongoing struggle for sponsorship. The only thing left now for CTT is to try to finish as strongly as possible in the Vuelta and at least try to go out with some dignity.