Early winners in 2012 signings, and odd passivity among some teams.
By Joe Lindsey
With an unprecedented (in recent decades) clutch of team foldings and mergers, the 2011-2012 transfer season has been an interesting one to watch. Just one entirely new top-level team – GreenEdge – is on the slate for 2012, and the cascade of mergers has put dozens of solid riders into the jobs market.
That said, many of the top ProTeams have been conservative in their signings. The new RadioShack-Nissan team appears to be selecting almost all of its roster from the existing RadioShack and Leopard teams. BMC, with its additions of Philippe Gilbert, Thor Hushovd, and Tejay van Garderen, is the great exception.
But there have been some big winners in the buyer’s market in pro cycling right now, chiefly several second-division, Pro Continental teams. They’ve managed to snap up any number of high-quality riders. While I don’t have firm information to back this up, I would also suspect the salary figures are flat or even a little down from the last two seasons, unless you’re a huge name.
Among notable moves, the former Skil-Shimano team (which loses Skil as a sponsor and will for the time being be known by the clunky Project 1t4i-Shimano moniker) picks up Patrick Gretsch and promising young sprinter-classics rider John Degenkolb.
Domestically, UnitedHealthcare gets a huge influx of talent. Phil Deignan and Jason McCartney come from RadioShack, while Jeff Louder transfers from BMC.
Interestingly, several teams that were on the brink last year between ProTeam and Pro Continental and also fighting for Tour de France invites have been pretty quiet. Vacansoleil’s big signing is Skil-Shimano sprinter Kenny van Hummel. Saur-Sojasun and Bretagne-Schuller have been passive, with few signings and no names of note among them.
Other than BMC, the most active ProTeam is the QuickStep-Omega merger, which is rebounding nicely after losing Gilbert. They keep a strong classics core with Sylvain Chavanel and the oft-injured Tom Boonen.
And while Jurgen van den Broeck and Jelle Vanendert go with the Lotto-Ridley formation, QS-Omega picks up a solid GC duo of Levi Leipheimer and Peter Velits, not to mention newly minted world TT champ Tony Martin. It may largely be because of luck and a bumper crop of riders in the market, but Patrick Lefevre has his best team in years.
Sky also has some savvy pickups. Obviously, Mark Cavendish is the big one, and his world championship win with a British team largely made up of future Sky teammates, shows that he will likely have a strong leadout again. But Sky also picks up Saxo Bank’s Richie Porte, HTC-Highroad climber Kanstantin Suitsov, and Colombian climber Sergio Henao, the revelation at the Tour of Utah.
By contrast, GreenEdge has a mixed bag. They splurged on sprinters: Matt Goss and Leigh Howard are the best of the crop; Robbie McEwen adds some senior leadership. But Allan Davis, Julian Dean and Baden Cooke will likely have to be content to be part of the leadout train.
There’s a core of younger riders with promise (including Howard) that includes Jack Bobridge and Simon Gerrans. But the team lacks any real GC candidate. In this respect, they remind me a bit of Katusha in its first year: big budget, lots of signings, but the roster is a bit of a hodgepodge. It’s like shopping hungry: You end up with a lot of food, but what can you make with it?
As a final note, the blog Inner Ring astutely noted one pickup that likely marks an emerging trend: Perennial bubble team Ag2r signed the obscure Mahdi Sohrabi, from the equally obscure Tabriz Petrochemical team.
Ag2r is not likely interested in extending its business strategy to Central Asia as much as it’s interested in Sohrabi’s 304 UCI points, which lead the UCI Asia tour. The UCI ranks teams by UCI points (which for the start of each season are based on the rankings of the top 15 riders on rosters as of January 1). That’s important for everything, including prospective ProTeam rankings and wild-card invites.
It will be interesting to see what kind of races Sohrabi enters, or if he’s been hired on a one-year deal to essentially rent his points. We’ll know it’s a trend when Adil Jelloul, the current leader of the UCI Africa tour with 446 points, signs a pro contract after a decade-long career as an elite amateur.