Rigoberto Uran, who placed second in the this year’s Tour de France and could be considered the team’s star rider, said he would wait for two weeks before starting any contract negotiations with other teams.

Slipstream is just the latest team to struggle with pro cycling’s uncertain business model. There are no franchises in the sport; WorldTour licenses are essentially granted on a year-to-year basis. And teams are not a stakeholder in television broadcast contracts, which cuts them off from a potentially valuable revenue source. Instead, they rely almost purely on sponsorship deals, which are often short term. As a result, a number of teams have had to close in recent years, including IAM, Tinkoff, Vacansoleil, Euskaltel, and the American HTC-Columbia team.

Faced with that reality, Slipstream general manager Jonathan Vaughters posted on Twitter what amounted to an open request for sponsorship leads. With enthusiastic fan support, the team is also testing the response to a grassroots crowdfunding campaign. (So far, it’s gauging interest with donation commitments starting at $25.) But finding a savior at this late a date is, at best, uncertain.

In a text message, Vaughters said that the team is focused solely on staying at the WorldTour level. If it can’t secure that level of backing, it will close. Slipstream could theoretically drop one tier to Pro Continental, where it could keep the team alive while engaging in a sponsor search to return to the WorldTour in 2019. But Vaughters said that some of the team’s current contractual commitments are contingent on being part of the WorldTour, and Pro Continental status would erode the budget even further.

The team’s possible imminent demise came as a shock to many in the sport. As word spread this past weekend, social media was filled with expressions of support from many fans. No one in pro cycling wishes a team to fold, but there appeared to be an outpouring of genuine affection for the organisation itself, not just riders and staff.

Slipstream started in 2003 as a small junior development team and quickly grew in size and aspirations. At a time when doping was epidemic in the sport, Slipstream intentionally carved out an identity as a clean team, and was the first in Olympic sports to experiment with the anti-doping testing process that would eventually be adopted by pro cycling and the entire Olympic movement. Today, the team stands as one of three U.S.-registered WorldTour teams, and has the most American riders of any top-tier team in the sport, with six. Along the way, it managed to notch a number of marquee victories.

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It’s important to note that Slipstream’s shaky footing is not the result of current sponsors backing out. Cannondale, Drapac, and others all kept their commitments, but Cannondale had already planned to step down a level to equipment sponsor, leaving a title spot vacant.

And the team continues to race, most prominently at the Tour of Spain, where Michael “Rusty” Woods is in eighth place overall after the first nine stages. But each day that passes without a firm commitment from a 2018 sponsor is corrosive to the team, as other teams looking to round out their 2018 rosters will attempt to poach talent like Uran, Woods, and Pierre Rolland, among others.

Cannondale-Drapac has a few more races left on its 2017 calendar, but by the time the Tour of Spain reaches Madrid in two weeks, we’ll know whether those will count as the team’s swan song or, if one more time, Vaughters and Co. manage to eke out a narrow win.