We all dream, every night we close our eyes and dream the dreams of cyclists. No not those involving your favourite rider, massage oil, and a beautiful woman, although if you have any good ones I’m always willing to share… Anyway, we all dream. We dream of winning races, of riding past Armstrong in the mountains and asking if he wants’ pacing to the top of the climb, we dream of riding past Boonen and asking if wants to blow his nose, we dream of being given the keys to the Colnago factory and having first pick at the Campag production line. But the real dream is the one when you get to own the team.

Now sports teams are expensive, you have your athlete salaries to pay, you have your back room staff to pay, you have to pay for medical assistance, you have to bribe officials and employ a good driver to help you make you escape when the testers turn up. But whatever the cost the dream of owning a team is the one that persists.

You get to pick the riders, you get to ask that one guy you really, really hate to fly half way round the world on the promise of a multi million Euro pay packet only to tell him, ‘Sorry, no spaces left’. You get to spend hours planning your lead out train, days picking you climbers and no time at all picking the director sportif, because that’s going to be you.

This year there are big new teams on the block, Armstrong has found a small corner shop that needs a little local publicity, the money’s not great but you get all the batteries you can carry. And across the pond Big Dave Brailsford has managed to open the bank account of one of the worlds biggest media organizations and is according to rumor driving around Europe with a suitcase of used notes looking for someone to ease his burden . And since the announcement the internet has been awash with rumor, counter rumor and counter counter rumor. One of the enjoyable things about the transfer season is that until the contracts are inked we can all play ‘Man what the hell are they signing that fool for’, ‘they need a sprinter, not another skinny climber’ , ‘time trialists, time trialists, where are the bloody time trialists?’ On and on it goes, there has hardly been a rider that hasn’t been linked to either The Shack or The Sky often riders get linked to both only to sign for some crazy left field outfit.

There has never been a year like it, well OK there hasn’t been a year like it for speculation since 1909. Suddenly a sport that was supposed to be on the ropes is coming out fighting and looking good for a victory.
And then there’s Cav. Cav of course has said that he’s more than happy at Columbia and intends to stay there cos he loves his team, he loves his team mates, he loves his manager, he loves his mechanic, he loves his saddle, he loves the air in his tyres and he loves winning. In fact have you ever heard a Columbia race winner not pouring undying love on his team mates, what are the odds of a Columbia rider winning and saying ‘My team were crap, none of them wash, they all smell and I hate them’ pretty low, still if you’re a betting person, I’m more than will to help a sucker and his money part, sorry, offer you good odds. The rumors on Cav go like this, Cav talks to Armstrong so he’s going to sign to The Shack, Cav’s a Brit and Rod Ellingworth is his coach, so he’s gonna sign for Team Sky, Cav used power tools, so he’s going to sign for Skill, Cav once bought a lottery ticket so he’s off to Belgium. I guess that speculating about the Royal Cavster is a good excuse to avoid that training session.

So, you buy that lottery ticket and 24 hours later you’re the proud owner of 150 million Euros, what then? Do you have a team of your hero’s, or a team of riders you’d like to slap with a brick? Do you have a team of winners or a team whose only reason to finish on the podium is to get ‘close and personal’ to the presentation girls? A team that knows what they are doing on the road or a team that will follow every one of your clearly insane instructions come race day – ‘If a break goes only chase if there’s a guy called Jan in it’, ‘When you get to the first climb attack whilst singing Copacabana’, ‘At the feed get off your bike and demand a big Mac’. With that sort of money you could have a lot of fun, with that sort of money you could become a media celebrity, a social outcast and a team manager all at the same time.