Sky retires from cycling at the end of the 2019 season - La Provincia

The British media and telecommunications company Sky announced this Wednesday that will retire from cycling at the end of the 2019 season, but the team will continue with another name if it finds a new sponsor.

Team Sky, winner of six of the last seven Tours of France with Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas, "will continue to run under another name if a new buyer is presented to contribute funds from the beginning of the 2020 season, "the cycling team said in a statement.

The Sky group entered cycling in 2008 supporting the British federation (British Cycling) and then created its own team with its name from 2010.

Since then the team dominates the world cycling, especially the big tests, with victories of the British Wiggins (2012), Froome (2013, 2015, 2016, 2017) and Geraint Thomas (2018) in six of the last seven editions of the Tour de France.

This hegemony provokes some rejection and led the organizers of the Tour de France to reduce in 2018 from 9 to 8 the number of runners in each team, to avoid that a single formation dominates the race.

The Sky team, led by Dave Brailsford, has also been involved in the controversy this year when five days before the start of the Tour de France its cyclist Chris Froome was declared innocent of doping by the International Cycling Union (UCI), after nine months of investigation for abnormal control in The return to Spain in September 2017.

Froome tested positive on September 7, 2017 in the Vuelta for salbutamol (an antiasthmatic) with a concentration twice the authorized limit of 1000 ng / ml.

The UCI finally decided to close the case based on the findings of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which on June 28 declared that the excessive rate of salbutamol does not constitute a positive control.

On October 5 Sky had extended in five years, until 2023, the contract of the Colombian cyclist Egan Bernal.