Who? A guide to 2012 WorldTour and Continental team changes
This year’s Vuelta a Espana was not only notable for JJ Cobo’s unlikely win, Peter Sagan’s triple victories and the Very British Podium in Madrid featuring Sky’s Chris Froome and Bradley Wiggins, but also for being a time when we could witness Leopard-Trek, Geox, Omega Pharma-Lotto, Quick Step, HTC and Skil-Shimano all together in incarnations we’ll never see again. With word out of Spain that Euskatel-Euskadi may be on the ropes as a team, something that may have dropped them out of gaining automatic WorldTour status, we could be adding the orange entity to our list of teams that exist only in history.
Here’s a brief guide to some of the team changes for 2012:
Lotto-Ridley and Omega Pharma-Quickstep: The Belgian lottery Lotto has been a co-sponsor of cycling teams for a long time, including Silence-Lotto and Predictor-Lotto. Now they’ve broken from Omega-Pharma to take on bike maker Ridley as co-sponsors. The team features Andre Greipel, Jurgen Van Den Broeck and Jelle Vanendert, who turned heads at the Tour de France by almost holding off Sammy Sanchez for the polka-dot jersey. Omega Pharma merged with Quick Step to sponsor a squad that includes Levi Leipheimer, Tom Boonen, and raider supreme Sylvain Chavanel.
1T4i: Yes, it’s a dog’s breakfast of numerals and letters, but it’s also the new incarnation of Skil-Shimano, whose best man is new German sprinting sensation Marcel Kittel. This will most likely be a Pro Continental squad.
GreenEdge: This high-powered new Australian gang jumped right into WorldTour status with plenty of muscle. Canadians Svein Tuft and Christian Meier join a load of talented Aussies like Stuart O’Grady, the Meyer brothers, Simon Gerrans, Matty Goss. Watch for this bunch to be ubiquitous in 2012.
Radioshack-Nissan-Trek: Speaking of high-powered . . . Alberto Contador fears this new amalgamation of Radioshack and Leopard-Trek so much that he was hoping Bjarne Riis would be able to pick up Cobo and Denis Menchov for Saxo Bank after Geox folded. This crew has plenty of strength, some of it aging: the Schlecks, Andreas Kloden, Chris Horner, and Fabian Cancellara.
