HTC-High Road goes under

The current number one team in the world, HTC-High Road, is no more.

Just last month in the Tour de France, the team had won five stages courtesy of super sprinter Mark Cavendish but it wasn't enough to save the team from dissolution.

The economics of the sport of cycling is so different from the other established sports. In the case of HTC-High Road, it's like the powerhouse, the Los Angeles Lakers, going bankrupt while the Minnesota Timberwolves, managed to stay afloat.

Of course, this is not usual since each team has its own sponsor and each sponsor has its own objective. Once the objective is met, the sponsor moves on.

When Greg Lemond won the 1989 Tour de France in spectacular fashion, his team sponsor, ADR, a car rental company, didn't renew for the following year. When he won the Tour again the next year, you'd think that ADR missed out, but it really didn't since its objectives were already met. The same thing happened with US POSTAL in 2004.

Other reasons include financial difficulties. Last year, team Cervelo merged with Garmin when they realized that they couldn't come up with the financial requirements of the UCI.

But the most common reason for companies not sell their products through cycling is doping. Even the owner of HTC-High Road, Bob Stapleton, admitted the fact. Cycling is known today as a sport for drug cheats but in my opinion, the reason why the sport is labeled as such is its strong desire to get rid of doping. You see, when you constantly clean up your house, neighbors tend to smell and see the trash being thrown out the window. On the other hand, if you don't clean your house, keep your gates closed, neighbors won't think that your house stinks.

Interestingly, there are other companies who soldier on despite being enmeshed in a doping scandal. Festina, a European watch maker, became a brand synonymous to doping when one of its employee was caught by border guards with doping products during the 1998 Tour de France. The mess, dubbed as "L'affaireFestina", didn't affect the company at all and continued to sponsor a top notch cycling team for another three years despite being at the center of the most compelling drug scandals in the history of cycling.

Radioshack is another brand that became a sponsor when Lance Armstrong came back to the sport in 2009. When Lance became embroiled in a US Federal investigation last year and retired again, it was expected that this year would be the final year for the Shack. But last June, it was announced that Radioshack would continue to sponsor the team up to 2013.

If you compare the results of HTC-High Road and Radioshack at this year’s Tour, latter's result is as barren as the Sahara. But surprise, surprise, it was the latter who got the prize.

So don't worry about the state of cycling. Sponsors come and sponsors go but the sport will always live on!

RACE RESULTS: CebuCycling Series, Points Race: 1ST- Sankx Ontanillas, 2nd- Mike Flores, 3rd- four riders tied (Ricky Ermitanio, Celso Nebria, Tata Ty, Marcelo Berdun)- THE FREEMAN