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"He was in Europe when the news broke that several of the sport's top stars might be banned from the Tour due to doping allegations, but by the time Kranefuss flew home to San Francisco, the day before the Tour began, his impression was that the scandal was already fading. By then the world had moved on from that,' he said. By then, everybody wanted to know who wins the Tour. The things people have been accused of doing weren't on our minds at that point. It was business as usual.'"

- VeloNews, 07 August 2006

This excerpt is from the article "A Sound Investment", discussing with iShares CEO Lee Kranefuss its agreement to take over sponsorship of the Phonak team and how doping scandals are not a deal breaker for sponsors. By the time this magazine had hit the newsstands, Phonak's Tour de France champion Floyd Landis had tested positive for exogenous testosterone. Once the scandals had hit home and directly affected Kranefuss, he changed his tune, announcing that iShares was withdrawing its sponsorship. The Phonak team folded, and riders were forced to find new employment.

It sums up perfectly the attitude which has too long pervaded professional cycling. I am the first to argue to cycling skeptics that it is the vastly-superior testing system which weeds out these cheats and causes the world's media to decry the doping crisis in cycling; if other sports were tested as rigorously, cycling would come out like a lamb. But it is the unique nature of cycling that it is sponsors which govern the makeup of the peloton. Soccer, the world's most-popular sport, is played by walking billboards as well. But the colors underneath the advertisement never change; whether Inter Milan is sponsored by Fiorucci jeans or Pirelli tires, it remains Inter Milan. American professional sports are organized around decades-old league and team structures where the league is effectively a monopoly of the professional sport. In cycling, each team is wholly dependent on the funding of its sponsor.

The reality is that, while Amaury Sport Organization and the UCI continue to bicker about the structure and scope of the ProTour and on whom the blame should fall for the ongoing controversies in this year's Tour de France, most cycling fans were simply wondering who would win the Tour. Riders are weeded out when indiscretions occur, and the peloton moves on en masse from there, tugging the hearts of the spectator along for the ride. The doping scandals most affect those whose name is inexplicably associated

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