At the end of the current season, Oleg Tinkov will leave cycling, but it won’t be without a few shots about the state of the sport. Giving an interview to Danish television broadcaster TV2 last week, the owner of the Tinkoff team said that the present cycling model is broken and that the likes of BMC and Katusha choose to put an end to their involvement in cycling in the foreseeable future.

Tinkov entered the sport as a sponsor but turned owner in 2013 when he bought out Bjarne Riis at the Tinkoff-Saxo team for six million euros. In 2015 the Russian businessman made threats about a potential withdrawal from the sport but finally confirmed it to Cyclingnews last December that this season would be his final one.

With Tinkoff team manager Stefano Feltrin still on the prowl for a new sponsor and saying that the potential to save the team is still only 50-50 after missing his self-imposed deadline of the Giro d’Italia, Swiss outfit IAM Cycling has already confirmed its departure from the sport after failing to find a secondary sponsor. At the closure of last season, BMC Racing prolonged their patronage deal beyond the end of 2016, although they refused to confirm the precise length of the deal. 

“I have not tried to sell it, what does that mean to sell in cycling? Teams collapse, like my team, and I'm sure there will soon be more that collapse,” Tinkoff told TV2. “The business model in cycling is wrong. I am sure that BMC and Katusha will close their doors soon.”

Tinkov elaborated that the existing logjam between governing body UCI and Tour de France organisers ASO regarding the proposed reforms of the sport and the WorldTour, in particular, are damaging the world of cycling, making it impossible for the sport to move on without agreement from the ASO.

“The sport is in a huge crisis, but if the ASO does not agree to share with the teams of the TV rights as in Formula 1, things will never change,” he said. “It may change the sport, but until that happens, we have scandal after scandal, and collapse after collapse. I do not see any future for the sport with this model.”