Twas a mixed day of news for American bicycle companies with announcements from Giant and Scott.

First, the news from Giant …

The Dutch Rabobank team will ride Giant bicycles next season, Giant announced Thursday (from Taiwan!). No word on what this means for American team Columbia, which rode Giants this season … and previously under the T-Mobile banner.

Rabo dumped prized Italian nameplate Colnago to sign with the Americans.

An interesting tidbit here is that the Dutch bank Rabobank has made inroads in the U.S., with branches throughout southern California. Giant also is based in California, headquartered in Ventura County. So it’s kind of a partnership of two California businesses.

Another interesting tidbit is that, according to the Rabo website, the Rabo AgriFinance Eastern Regional Office is right here in St. Louis, Mo. Now the appearance of Rabobank’s under-23 team in the upcoming Tour of Missouri makes perfect sense. Who knew Rabo could claim home-field advantage in the Show-Me State? 

On another front, Scott has had enough and is withdrawing its sponsorship of the former Saunier Duval team after this season. This is probably good news for Scott (no sense throwing good money on top of bad) and most definitely bad news for the Spanish team and its riders.

Scott, which had been a co-title sponsor with Saunier Duval, initially stepped up as primary sponsor after S-D bailed following the Riccardo Ricco CERA doping scandal that promped the team to withdraw from the Tour de France. Scott, which has been involved with the team since 2004, also signed up American Beef out of Mexico as a co-sponsor, and it looked like the team would survive Ricco’s stupidity.

But then the Vuelta a Espana un-invited the newly minted Scott-American Beef squad, and the Tour of Missouri did the same, though more quietly. With races bailing on the team  — and I seriously doubt the TdF would invite the team back next year – it became abundantly clear that Scott needed to move on as well.

Ricco’s decision to dope with CERA took down his team and cost all of his teammates their jobs.

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