Lance Armstrong will once again be part of the Specialized team
In what is surely one of the biggest surprises of the year, Mike Sinyard, founder and chairman of Specialized Bicycle Components, shared details of a new agreement between the bicycle and component manufacturing giant, and the former cyclist. Sinyard explained that despite Armstrong’s lifetime ban from competitive cycling, the disgraced cyclist would be returning to Specialized, but not as a racer. Instead, he’s being hired as a spokesman, in an attempt to improve the company’s image.
On the heels of the Café© Roubaix PR disaster, in which Specialized infamously overstepped the bounds of intellectual property and trademark law by threatening to sue a Canadian shop owner over the name “Café© Roubaix” (which Specialized didn’t actually have rights to in Canada), Sinyard must have realized that despite spending decades promoting cycling, albeit with heavy-handed business tactics, it only takes one small act to turn the fickle community of two-wheel enthusiasts against him. Well, in his case it was a succession of small acts. And large ones. And medium ones.
Kicking off a tour to restore the company’s name, Armstrong will first visit Tristan da Cunha, where he stands a pretty good chance of convincing the inhabitants all that is good about Specialized. No word on where his next stop is after that.
When asked why he chose Lance Armstrong for this task over any of the dozens of other public faces of cycling, Sinyard reportedly replied “Floyd Landis wasn’t available”. If you’ve read this far, we’d like to remind you that the publication date of this article is the first day of April, and we hope you have a wonderful day.