Coast Is Clear?
With the Coast / Bianchi affair now a part of the past, some are calling it a happy ending and a solution to several problems. In typical cycling fashion though, the majority of the riders and some management are left as the ones who foot the bill throughout, and long after, the turmoil. The solution seems to be “expedient” above all else.
With a few riders leaving Bianchi for greener (er Celeste-ier?) pastures, 19 of the 22 riders will make the move. But nothing is confirmed as of yet as to the payment of due salaries for the past couple of months. Going forward, the pay scale is also different (different meaning less) for riders and management.
Marcel Wust will not be making the move as director, and has stated that the compensation for several is inadequate and that some will suffer to the point of not being compensated well enough to provide the basics for themselves. It remains to be seen what all of the pay packages look like and whether or not Jan Ullrich will be made to suffer as much as the men who escort him up the road. But again, that’s cycling.
The argument here is that less is better than nothing, but is it? If the UCI regulations governing team finance had been more effective, the people on this team would have been taken care of properly (meaning regardless of situation, Gunther Dahms, the honcho at Coast, would have had to make up any difference for the remainder of the year in compensation for the team.) Instead, we can only be left with the feeling that the regulations at the UCI are such that team owners can negotiate an escape from commitments that does not provide security on the contracts that they had agreed to. In the case of someone with the wealth of Gunther Dahms, it is a shame that he not be held more accountable for the hardship forced on the team’s staff and riders.
It would be great to hear that cycling’s governing bodies and administrators could report in the near future that all of the back pay has been given to the riders and management. And I don’t mean that I’d like to hear that “The riders and management have reached an agreement on the payment of back wages”, because that translated to “the riders and management have been screwed into taking a settlement of less pay than they have earned”. It would also be great to hear that the sports Governors have added new security measures for all teams so that riders and management don’t go hungry, while team owners and governors eat Gourmet while deciding their fate.
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