Rock Racing fires Creed, Baldwin and Grajales
- By Steve Frothingham
- Published Apr. 19, 2009
- Updated Apr. 19, 2009 at 8:13 PM UTC
Rock Racing on Sunday confirmed it had fired Michael Creed, Caesar Grajales and Chris Baldwin.
Team owner Michael Ball said the move was made to save money.
“In personally funding the team each month, I’ve had to make some very difficult choices based on the long-term interests of the team,” Ball said in a statement released by the team. “All three are incredible talents who I have great respect for. When our sponsorship goals are achieved, I want nothing more than to have all three back on this team.”
Creed told VeloNews Saturday that he was not terribly surprised by the move, although he was disappointed that he heard about it from a teammate before he heard about from team management. He also said his promised salary had been cut in half over the winter.
Grajales said Sunday evening that he had not heard anything official from the team, but that a teammate had told him this week that he was being let go. He said he talked to one director at the team this week who said he had not been let go.
“I haven’t heard anything about it,” he said. “It’s weird: they sent me new shoes and clothing this week and last week a new TT bike, and I got my salary this week.”
Baldwin was not immediately available to comment.
Steve Frothingham
VeloNews.com editor Steve Frothingham joined the gang in bike-crazy Boulder in early 2008. He is the former executive editor of the trade magazine Bicycle Retailer & Industry News. He also was a reporter and editor for The Associated Press, where he covered three presidential primaries in politics-crazy New Hampshire. His racing career began on a BMX track in 1980 and reached its zenith with several miserable road races as a category 2 in the early 90s. He subsequently retreated to cat. 3, where he has had a consistently mediocre (at best) record ever since, in road, mountain bike and cyclocross events. Follow him on Twitter at @steve_froth