U.S. Postal Service Pro Cycling Team History
The US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team and later named the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team presented by Berry Floor operated from 1996 through 2004. The United States Postal Service was the title (primary) sponsor from 1996 through 2004 and the team was nicknamed the "Blue Train". Berry Floor, a Belgian flooring company, was the secondary sponsor, also known as a Presenting Sponsor. Domestically the USPS Pro Cycling Team was presented by Alloc, the American subsidiary of Berry Floor.
Lance Armstrong won six Tours de France (1999–2004) with US Postal, and in 2003 Roberto Heras—at that time a US Postal rider—won the Vuelta a España. Armstrong went on to win a seventh Tour de France in 2005, after the USPS contract and sponsorship ended.
The US Postal Service announced that they would cease sponsorship at the end of the 2004 racing season when their eight-year contract expired. They had previously been under fire for the expenditure from organizations such as Postal Watch, a website critical of the United States Postal Service. Legitimate problems of mismanagement and sloppy accounting were pointed out by the Postal Service itself, via the USPS Office of the Inspector General. Before the expiration of the USPS contract, Armstrong insisted that he would only continue to ride with the USPS team structure. This demand was met on June 15, 2004 when Discovery Networks stepped in and agreed to sponsor the team for the next three years as the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team.
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“I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.”
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