Welcome back to Lantern Rouge Cycling podcast presented by Zwift Eurings with Academy season.

This is going to be a news roundup of sorts. We've broken our summer surgeon,

engineer and holidays looking sunkissed in warmer climbs. We've broken our holidays to bring you

some B&B collapse news, calves speculation and Miguel and Helope's contract termination.

The second year running, the different reasons this time updates. So we'll hit you with those

and then we'll get back to team previews later next week. But yeah, Benji, B&B not just

not going to World Tour, which was never happening, not just a bigger budget with a World Tour level

budget, not just staying as a pro-conti team, completely collapsed, finished, done, no budget,

teams ceases to exist. Even I didn't expect that to happen. I thought at least the men's pro-conti

team would continue in some feeble form. What's actually taken place here? I thought so as well.

I thought that the stages they were at would remain of the plans that were being rumored,

did not occur. But let's get a bit of a timeline going of what happened. We know that B&B comes

from the fact that a team was opened in, I think 2018, Vital Concept that grew over the years

eventually doing Tour de France's. But the rumors of a bigger goal were already set at the start.

They wanted to, in a certain time, become a World Tour team. Initially it was by 2020,

but that clearly did not occur. Eventually we saw in mid 2022, roughly during or just before

the Dolphin, if my memory serves me right, the rumors that there would be a big sponsor that would

throw money at this team. This idea came forward with the numbers of 15 to 20 million budget,

which if you want to know what kind of budget that is, that's mid-tier World Tour. If not just above

mid-tier, I'd say average World Tour is probably roughly 16 to 18 to 19 million, I'd dare to say.

Some teams being 10 million, some teams being 14 million, that's tough. But 15 to 20 million puts

you in the middle of World Tour. So if this team would have that budget, it still be a pro team because

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