By Daniel Friebe
22nd October 2008

When the news that T-Mobile’s sponsors were pulling out of cycling broke, many thought the team’s days were numbered. Since then, the team now known as Columbia have established themselves as the best in cycling. Daniel
Friebe finds out how they did it.

As new dawns go, even an eternal optimist like Bob Stapleton would have to concede that a particular damp, drizzly, autumn afternoon in southern Germany looked less than auspicious.

It’s September 2007, the World Championships, and Stapleton has summoned a handful of journalists to a Stuttgart restaurant to casually introduce his masterplan and some of the men who he hopes can execute it. In stride Mark Cavendish, George Hincapie, Roger Hammond, Marco Pinotti, Bradley Wiggins and young Americans Craig Lewis and John Devine.

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