Tinkoff

Lil' Tyler Hambones has officially announced what'd been leaked and rumored for months - he'll be racing again this summer with Tinkoff Credit Systems. That name might ring a bell; the 37 year old Russian tycoon fancies himself a rolleur, training and racing with his squadra. The team has been linked with the au currant crop of suspect riders, including Ulli', Mancebo and Hondo. Not to mention a rumored affiliation with Slimy Siaz. So who is Oleg Tinkoff? The cycling press won't tell you much. Funny how in a sport riddled with drug cases, there is so little information about the real money behind the teams. In many other sports, the team owners' are widely written about. Maybe if our beloved journalists followed suit, more folks like those of us here at HPT would be suspect of teams owned by drug companies and sports betting franchises. Not that there's anything wrong on the surface with Tinkoff judging from the intel that can be dug up in a 20 minute trolling of the web. Little information is available about the Credit Systems part of the business. Oleg Tinkoff is a brewery owner and a resturanteur, although the brewery upon who's board he sits after selling his own brand to them is InBev S.A., the largest brewer in the world. Following the sale and subsequent shift from brewmaster to board member of one of the planet's largest corporations, Oleg opened a successful chain of restaurant/taverns humbly named Tinkoff Restaurants. They are now expanding into Western Europe, providing a perfect need to splash the corporate identity on a sports team. Prior to the whole brew and brats strategy, Ol' egg ran a successful processed food manufacturing company called Darya, which he also sold for a tidy profit. Where the credit arm fits into all of this is less apparent in the financial press. His interest in signing high-profile tainted racers signifies perhaps more of a maverick marketing ploy than it does any links to organized crime. Certainly his racing team - and his businesses - would not be so prominent in the sporting news were he not out signing 'reformed' needleheads. Still, the neuvo-megarich that Oleg runs with are the boys with the biggest warchests in the casino and seem more apt to treat racing of any kind as a win at any cost proposition. If Tinkoff and his team prove to be legit, it's an exciting addition to bike racing - an enthusiastic young mogul injecting new blood into the sport. Unfortunately, it's too easy to recognize every drip of irony in the semantics of the previous sentence as reason to suspect that yet again the fans are mocked by a cursory shrugging off of the drug problem in cycling. By signing convicted or accused liars, dopers and cheats what message is being sent? Should be an interesting season that's for sure, with perhaps more interest off the par cors' than on them. Omerta.