In front of the sensational shift? Large groups struggling for survival

Cycling's flagship, the mighty british Team Sky, has laid to in Colombia, where the superstar Chris Federer and the controversial teammanager David Brailsford is in charge of a charm offensive that can end with a stay note: the scene for the world's greatest cycling teams.

Mediegiganten Sky intends by the end of the year to stop the funding of the team, which in its ten years on the verdenstoppen has been boosted by several billion dollars. This year alone the team, according to british media, with a budget of over 300 million dollars.

Brailsford has written several long-term contracts and chasing, therefore, with growing desperation, a new sponsor, who will pay the bill from the new year.

Colombian media reports that Brailsford during his stay in Colombia, where Team Sky in these days running a star-studded stage races, have held a meeting with the country's president, Ivan Duque, and sportsminisiter Ernest Lucena. On the agenda would be an idea to make Team Sky for Colombia's first World Tour team.

Team Sky in the year of termination a training camp in Colombia, where the team's training here overværets of the soldiers. Currently running the Rangers and his teammates etapeløbet Tour Colombia. Photo: AFP / Joaquin Sarmiento.

- This is the dream and the hope we have, " says Ernest According to the newspaper El Espectador, according to the cyclingnews.com who writes, to Lucena expect to be able to scrape 200 million together annually by means of sponsorpenge from three-four multinational companies.

on Thursday, wrote the Italian newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport, to the state-controlled, the colombian oil and gas company Ecopetrol is inside the picture as the main sponsor.

The colombian state owns 80 percent of Ecopetrol. The company caused last year's natural disaster in eastern Colombia, as a faulty oil well pumped large amounts of oil out in a vulnerable nature and at the same time in the severe degree blackened Ecopetrols reputation.

the Team Sky poses in Colombia to start with three colombian riders, namely Egan Bernal, Sebastian Henao and Ivan Sosa, and the team has through the ages had several other colombians on the team. Among them, Rigoberto Uranium, which is said to be a driving force when it comes to the dream of a colombian team at the highest level.

With his usual sense of to talk long about a topic without saying much specifically, let Brailsford upon arrival to Colombia to understand that he appreciates Colombia with its colours, the music, the fans and the passion, and that it's probably only a matter of time before you get a colombian team to see – or at least a team with the ’colombian heart’.

There are currently eight UCI-registered teams in Colombia, one of which is located in cycling's second division. It is prokontinentalholdet Manzana Postobon.