Firstly, what's happened to Geox-TMC is regrettable and an employment-tragedy for the riders and staff who are affected. (I was going to call it a human tragedy, but it doesn't really rise to that level until some poor Spanish mechanic who doesn't have much in the way of anything beyond his next paycheck can't make the next payment on his house or car b/c he's out of a job and freaks and tries to take his own life.) Secondly, it's symptomatic of this weird semi-professionalism that seems to make the marketing/pr/sponsorship-devo capabilities of otherwise "top-level" (mid-level?) teams appear less than competent, especially in a difficult economic climate. Thirdly, I'm not surprised there is difficulty w/ the Venezuelans - not mentioned in any of the cycling press's coverage of the saga (that I've seen) is the fact that the Venezuelan parliament is all up in Chavez's sh^t about his sponsorship through PDVSA of F1 driver Pastor Maldonado and the Williams team. That deal barely survived for 2012 and it would seem unlikely that the politicians would be eager to see another multi-million dollar sports sponsorship go through without having the chance to review it. At least that's how it seems to me.

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