Discovery says "goodbye." Missouri says "hello."

The inaugural Tour of Missouri will leave the start line in Kansas City on Tuesday, showcasing the beauty of the state and the prowess of some of the world's best endurance athletes over almost 600 miles of Missouri roads.

But the race also will serve as a rolling, fond farewell to the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team, the most successful American team in the sport's history. The team, which first gained fame under the U.S. Postal Service banner, has brought its all-stars — Tour de France winner Alberto Contador, Tour of California winner and U.S. Cycling professional road race champion Levi Leipheimer and 2006 U.S. Cycling professional winner George Hincapie — for the race, which ends in St. Louis on Sept. 16.

Riders, team directors and race officials agree that without Lance Armstrong's seven consecutive victories in the Tour de France and the team's success over the last decade, there would be no Tour of Missouri, nor Tours de Georgia and California, nor a blossoming U.S. pro circuit.

"I don't see how you can't give credit to Lance and the team for the growth of U.S. cycling," said Kevin Livingston, a St. Louis native who rode with Armstrong in his first two victories and is the Tour of Missouri's competition director.

The team wasn't the first with U.S. sponsors to race in Europe, but it trumped the success of its predecessors. The 7-Eleven team, the first to feature U.S. riders, raced in Europe through the 1980s. The team folded in 1991 but was replaced by Motorola, for which Armstrong won the 1993 world championship and two stages of the Tour de France in the early 1990s. Shortly before Motorola folded in 1996, a group called

Tailwind Sports formed.

"We had a goal of getting to the Tour de France," said Mark Gorski, who served as Tailwind CEO from 1995 to 2003 and is director of corporate development for the Tour of Missouri. "A lot of sponsors nodded politely but didn't believe it could happen."

Looking to expand its presence in the global delivery market, the U.S. Postal Service signed with Tailwind in 1995 and first displayed its logo in the Tour de France in 1997. The team didn't sign Armstrong until 1998, after he had recovered from testicular cancer. He rode to his first victory in 1999 with Livingston and five other American riders surrounding him.

"That year was something of an anomaly," Gorski said. "We never thought about being an all-American team. It was about putting the best team on the road to win."

After Armstrong's second successive victory, though, the status of U.S. cycling took a giant leap. Armstrong's American teammates, nicknamed the Posties, grew eager to spread their wings. Livingston and Jonathan Vaughters were among the first of Armstrong's lieutenants to leave for teams with European-based management and sponsorship. Leipheimer, Tyler Hamilton, Floyd Landis and Christian Vandevelde followed.

"That was important for us as riders," Livingston said. "It showed the world that Americans were taking the next step in the progression."

They were replaced over the years by riders dubbed the Spanish Armada: Roberto Heras, Jose Luis Rubiera, Manuel Beltran, Benjamin Noval and Portugal's Jose Acevedo.

"Lance demanded a team that was supportive of his leadership," Gorski said. "They were quiet guys, completely satisfied to play their roles."

But Postal's image as America's team was entrenched, thanks to Armstrong's string of seven victories. His status among cancer survivors allowed him to transcend the sport, and he was voted Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year in 2002.

"From 1999 on, he was on the front page in color of every newspaper in the world, with those sponsors' logos there. They couldn't have been happier," Gorski said. "He was in every living room year-round with his endorsement deals. He brought the team and the sport to new places."

Cycling teams in the U.S. rode the wave. Tom Schuler, who rode with 7-Eleven and managed the Saturn team from 1991 to 2003, said the number of teams racing professionally stateside increased to about 12 a year, up from five to seven in the mid-1990s.

More teams meant more races, including the inaugural Tour de Georgia in 2003. The Posties raced in each of the five Tours de Georgia, placing a rider on the podium each year and adding to the race's credibility. That success led to the Tour of California in 2006 and the Tour of Missouri this year, making three major U.S. stage races sanctioned by cycling's international governing body, UCI.

"We all benefited from the Lance effect," said Schuler, director and manager of the Colavita-Sutter Home Pro Cycling Team racing in the Tour of Missouri. "A lot of people became interested in riding bikes, and a lot of companies were willing to put their names into cycling."

Willing sponsors included the Discovery family of cable networks, which replaced U.S. Postal on the team's uniform in 2005 for Armstrong's final Tour victory. Discovery riders continued to succeed at the major U.S. races after Armstrong's retirement in 2006, but because of a change in leadership at the network, Discovery announced early this year that it wouldn't renew its contract with the cycling team.

The team won the Tour of California and Paris-Nice in the spring and returned to the Tour de France podium in July, when Contador and Leipheimer took first and third, respectively. Winning wasn't enough, though, to offset a series of doping scandals and the infighting among cycling's governing bodies and race organizers. Unable to secure a sponsor to foot an annual bill of $15 million, Tailwind announced last month that it would cease operation at season's end.

"We couldn't in good conscience ask someone to spend the sort of money that it would require to sponsor the team in the current situation," Bill Stapleton, Tailwind's general manager, told reporters on a conference call.

The team's departure means that UCI's ProTour, which includes the elite races in Europe, will be without an American-sponsored team, and one of the powerhouses of the 20-squad league.

"Every year at this time, there's a lot of people talking about doom and gloom because of teams closing or Lance retiring or drug scandals," Schuler said. "What they don't talk about is new things happening: new races, new teams, new opportunities."

The Tour of Missouri heads that list. Among the other squads competing here is Team Slipstream-Chipotle, which is under the guidance of former Postie Vaughters and hopes for a wild-card invitation to next year's Tour de France.

"We have three major UCI stage races; a decade ago we had none," Vaughters said. "We have more than a handful of riders that can challenge for a victory in any major race in Europe. It used to be just two or three. But the biggest change is fans. Lance attracted a lot of new people to the sport. Once they learned more, they changed from Lance fans to cycling fans. As long as the fans are there, cycling's future will get brighter."

knelson@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8233