Tour gets a boost with addition of sponsors

A month ago the two American-based elite pro cycling teams were called Team High Road and Chipotle-Slipstream. One named after corny good intentions and one after good-looking burritos.

As the Tour de France kicks off its three-week meander through the French landscape, American race fans will see that Team High Road is now Team Columbia and Chipotle is Team Garmin. Never have two name changes meant such good news for a reeling sport.

Despite a three-year siege of embarrassing doping scandals, these two teams attracted title sponsors in the last month.

Tim Boyle, chief executive of Columbia, said his Portland, Ore.-based sportswear company wants to make inroads into the European market.

Jon Cassat, vice president of communications for Garmin, the Olathe, Kansas-based company that makes portable navigation devices, gave the same reason for taking over Chipotle. “Over 15 million people watch the race in person,” Cassat said.

Last year Team Columbia was T-Mobile. The riders wore bright pink and had been stars of the peloton for more than a decade. The team provided such Tour de France winners as Bjarne Riis and Jan Ullrich -- who it turns out were illegally doping, as was Patrick Sinkewitz of last year’s team. As was the almost-winner Michael Rasmussen of Rabobank and big favorite Alexandre Vinokourov of Astana. And they were just the riders caught in a week.

By the end of last year’s bumpy ride, T-Mobile had announced it was dropping sponsorship. So did Discovery Channel, which sponsored the American-based team that had fostered Lance Armstrong’s greatness.

What the doping scandals did more than drive away fans was drive away the money backing the sport, and the most glaring example was when Discovery walked away and no replacement followed. That, in turn, prompted team manager Johan Bruyneel and part-owner Armstrong to fold up their tents.

T-Mobile was saved when Riverside native Bob Stapleton committed his own money for at least two years and then renamed his group Team High Road.

It costs upward of $11 million a year to field a competitive pro team and Stapleton, who sold his VoiceStream Wireless company to Deutsche Telecom (which became T-Mobile) in 2000, said he believed that much in the sport.

Jonathan Vaughters, a former Tour de France racer, also started a grass-roots team two years ago with the very public plan of being transparently clean.

His team, known as Chipotle-Slipstream, was surviving on smaller sponsorship deals until a month ago when Garmin announced it would become the title sponsor.

Columbia’s Boyle was introduced to Stapleton earlier this year and Boyle, who is a businessman and not a cycling fanatic, said, “We were comfortable with Bob’s focus on clean racing and, quite frankly, we signed on because it’s a sport under pressure now. Now we could afford it. Maybe a year ago we couldn’t.”

Over the last three years cycling has lost all of its most famous riders to either retirement (Armstrong) or to doping issues -- either individual (Floyd Landis, Ivan Basso, Tyler Hamilton, Vinokourov, Rasmussen, Tom Boonen) or team-related (Andreas Kloeden, defending Tour de France champion Alberto Contador and Levi Leipheimer).

Contador and Leipheimer, who finished third at last year’s Tour, are sidelined because their Astana team was banned over doping issues from last year. Though Astana cleaned house and brought over Bruyneel along with riders Contador and Leipheimer, Tour officials would not relent.

Bruyneel said he was at peace with not having a team in the world’s most prominent race. He also said the best sign for the sport is having new sponsors.

“For three years we had nothing but bad news, sponsors going away and no new sponsors coming in,” Bruyneel said from his home in Madrid. “We saw that last year at Discovery when we could just not find a sponsor.

“With High Road and Slipstream getting new guys on, that is proof that no matter what, cycling is very interesting and still one of the best and cheapest vehicles for international exposure.”

Stapleton, speaking from Brest, France, said, “My view of the atmosphere around the sport ranges from concern to cautious optimism. There is a general belief that everybody is trying to do the right thing but there is a fear that something can still happen. I think everybody’s got their fingers crossed and are hoping for the best.”

Vaughters said it might not be a coincidence that these two teams, so openly campaigning against doping, have received new sponsors.

“Both our team and Bob’s team have gone through quite a bit,” he said. “We’ve convinced the public that our story is what our story is. The good part of that is that corporate sponsors are still interested, the fan base exists, the passion is still there.”

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diane.pucin@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Tour de France

When: Saturday -- July 27.

Where: 21 stages beginning in Brest on the Brittany coast, 2,212 miles ending in Paris.

Whom to watch: Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto), 31, Australia, runner-up to Alberto Contador in 2007; Carlos Sastre (CSC), 33, Spain, tough mountain climber; Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d’Epargne), 28, Spain, beat Lance Armstrong in a 2005 mountain stage; Damiano Cunego (Lampre), 26, Italy, daring young climber.

American riders: George Hincapie (Team Columbia); Tyler Farrar (Team Garmin); Danny Pate (Team Garmin); Christian VandeVelde (Team Garmin); William Frischkorn (Team Garmin).

TV: Live daily coverage on Versus beginning 5:30 a.m. Pacific; expanded rebroadcast 5-8 p.m.

--Diane Pucin