The future of cycling giant Team Sky was thrown into doubt on Wednesday after British media company Sky announced it was ending a partnership that has delivered six Tour de France titles in the past seven years. Team Sky have clocked up eight Grand Tour wins since their formation, but they have also been plunged into controversy for using special exemptions to administer drugs that can enhance performance.
The outfit, which has 322 wins in total since 2010, will operate for the last season as Team Sky in 2019 and could continue under a different name if a new backer is found, a Sky statement said.
"The vision for Team Sky began with the ambition to build a clean, winning team around a core of British riders and staff," said team principal Dave Brailsford.
"We are proud of the part we have played in Britain's transformation into a cycling nation over the last decade," he added.
"While Sky will be moving on at the end of next year, the team is open-minded about the future and the potential of working with a new partner, should the right opportunity present itself."
Sky's announcement closes an extraordinary chapter in cycling that began with the dream of creating Britain's first Tour de France champion - which seemed overly ambitious at the time.
But Bradley Wiggins made it reality in 2012, before Chris Froome won four Tour de France titles and Geraint Thomas became Sky's third winner of cycling's landmark event this year.
Froome responded to the news by insisting his team expect to return stronger than ever with a new backer next year.
"We are not finished yet by any means. Everyone at Team Sky has got big ambitions for 2019 and this news has made us more determined than ever to make them happen," Froome wrote on his Twitter account. "I can't predict the future but I can say this with absolute certainty, this is a really special team. "We plan to be together in 2020 if at all possible and we will all be doing everything we can to help make that happen - in different colours with a new partner but the same values, focus and desire to win." Deep-pocketed Sky are known for Brailsford's meticulous and innovative application of 'marginal gains', the theory that many small advantages in areas as diverse as wind resistance, diet and sleep quality can add up to a significant improvement in performance.
However, Sky's image was clouded in the controversy over so-called therapeutic use exemptions, after a damning British parliamentary report said the team crossed an "ethical line" by using the loophole to administer drugs to enhance performance.
The Commons digital, culture, media and sport committee report said MPs believed that triamcinolone, used to treat asthma, "was being used to prepare Wiggins, and possibly other riders supporting him, for the Tour de France".
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