Cadel Evans in the yellow jersey in the 2011 Tour de France (Courtesy BMC – Tim de Waele)
Never before has the call for an Australian team at the Tour de France been more relevant. Cadel Evans’ Tour de France win will rightly go down as one of the finest ever sporting accomplishments by an Australian. It will also go down as one of the most improbable.
On Sunday, Evans became the first Australian ever to win cycling’s marquee event in its 108-year history.
He also became only the third non-European to have ever topped the podium in Paris after the Americans, Greg LeMond and Lance Armstrong.
And at 34, Evans is the oldest Tour winner in 88 years.
The gritty Aussie produced a near-perfect ride and, crucially, managed to avoid the sort of trouble that derailed his Tour bid last year to deliver an historic win.
But unlike John Bertrand and the crew of Australia II or Kieren Perkins or Cathy Freeman, Evans was not competing for Australia, when he rode onto the famed Parisian avenue the Champs-Élysées.
He was riding for a US-registered team, backed by a Swiss company, the bike manufacturer BMC.
That’s not unusual in cycling, a sport where commercial interests have historically trumped national ones.
The first Tour de France was organised by the newspaper L’Auto in the hope of boosting sales – it worked – and teams have typically been bankrolled by exposure-seeking sponsors.
But that’s not to say that certain trade teams don’t have defining national characters.
The Euskaltel-Euskadi team of King of the Mountains classification winner, Samuel Sanchez, prefers to recruit Basque riders and is funded in part by the Basque government; Lance Armstrong may have recruited a bunch of Spaniards to help him in the mountains but US Postal was an unashamedly American affair; and last year the British Team Sky was unveiled in a display of patriotic fervour.
But Australia has never had a top-tier, commercially-backed trade team of our own. Until now.
At the Tour Down Under back in January, Green Edge Cycling announced its bid to put a top level Australian team on the road in 2012.
It’s an ambitious undertaking that, if successful, would see the first Australian team at the Tour de France since a rag tag Aussie-Kiwi outfit led by Hubert Opperman lined-up in 1928 (Opperman finished 12th overall that year and returned as part of an all-Australian team in 1931 with R.W. ‘Fatty’ Lamb, Ossie Nicholson and Frank Thomas to finish 12th).
Run by Cycling Australia’s former high performance manager, Shayne Bannan and ex-professional Neil Stephens, Green Edge hopes to assemble a predominately Australian team to compete in the world’s top races.
Next month, Bannan, Stephens and their principal backer, Victorian businessman Andrew Ryan of Jayco caravans, will take the next step towards securing a place in cycling’s World Tour.
From August, Green Edge can begin signing riders and on the 15th, the team will submit a request for Pro Team status with the sport’s governing body, the Union Cycliste International (UCI).
On November 1, Aussie sports fans will find out if Green Edge has made the grade when the UCI announces the list of Pro Teams.
There is no guarantee that Green Edge will be admitted to the World Tour. Last year, another Australian start-up, Pegasus Racing, failed in its bid to reach the top level of the sport, but so far things are looking good.
The team has guaranteed funding for three years, a professional outfit headed up by CEO Mike McKay of “Oarsome Foursome” fame, and with a number of Australian riders out of contract this year, an enviable pool of talent to recruit from.
Should Green Edge get the nod from the UCI, it would represent a landmark moment in the history of Australian cycling.
Aussie riders have come a long way since Opperman’s pioneering rides eighty years ago. We’re no longer the underdogs.
Earlier this year, Tasmania’s Matt Goss led the World Tour rankings after his win in the one-day Classic Milan-San Remo, while Australia led the Nations ranking.
Now, Evans is on top and Australia lies third behind traditional cycling powerhouses Spain and Italy.
So, as Aussie sports fans debate whether or not Cadel’s Tour win is the greatest ever moment in Australian sporting history, one thing is clear: it’s about bloody time that Australia had its own team competing at the Tour de France.
T.J. Collins runs the cycling blog Il Gruppo.
Kim
Guest
I am so excited & hopeful as we count down the mere weeks to the final decision on the Green Edge bid to be included in the pro team tour. It has been inspirational to watch Bannan's achievements in the cycling arena. Bannan's decade as Australia's High Performance Manager, bought about an excellent well developed & applied program, that has given Australia incredible strength & depth in the cycling world. Bannan's invaluable experience with the cycling world & his proven attention to detail time & time again will guarantee that the licence bid is submitted with substance & strength. With the well respected management, there are many Australian cyclists keen to ride in an Australian Pro Team & strong International interest, this will give Green Edge the benefit of putting together a well rounded team, with the opportunity for not only one day tour & successful stage wins but also the ability to grow into a team with real future contention in the major tours. Thank you for a well written article on what will be hopefully another amazing victory in Australia's sporting history.
T.J. Collins
Guest
Yeah. Creative differences. Funny timing.
T.J. Collins
Guest
Hey Hutchoman, I presume you're not responding directly to my piece seeing as I didn't say we "need" an Australian team and, as far as I recall, didn't express any kind of opinion on the funding situaion in cycling. Clearly, most bike riders are more concerned about getting a ride, not what country the team is registered in. That said, I do think an Aussie team would be pretty cool as does pretty much every Aussie pro out there. And from what I've been able to ascertain, so does the majority of the Australian cycling public. As to the degree of success to expect, I don't think anyone's under any illusion about it. Setting up a pro team is a long term project and the people involved have been quite clear about that. They're not necessarily targeting a marquee rider and are instead going for the younger guys. As for your comment re Australian's knowledge of other bike races, I think it's growing. Judging by SBS' increasing coverage, Rupert Guinness' travel itinerary and the traffic on http://ilgruppo.cc, I think Aussies are slowly warming to cycling. Still, it should be remembered that cycling isn't a mainstream sport anywhere -- including the sport's European heartland where the beautiful game rules -- and we should have realistic expectations when it comes to the public's interest in cycling.
T.J. Collins
Guest
OK, how about the Ryan family? Still, Andrew's the face of the family's involvement and the Director. http://www.greenedgecycling.com/management
T.J. Collins
Guest
You're right, it won't be an entirely Australian affair. But Bannan is keen to have 60-70% Aussie riders.
Hutchoman
Roar Pro
While Green Edge Cycling would appear to be bringing in the next evolution of Australian cycling, I disagree with the assertion that we "need" an Australian team at the Tour de France or in professional cycling more generally. Having an Australian team will not necessarily provide us with any greater successes than we have already enjoyed, particularly in the last decade. It would appear that the "internationalisation" of professional cycling is doing this job for us. While it is for sure and certain that the world of professional cycling typically sees commercial interests placed above national interests, I would ask, so what? If overseas business interests are keen to support professional cycling and in turn support Australian cyclists, we should rejoice in this fact not decry it out of national fervour. At the moment it is clear that your average Australian has a growing interest in the Tour de France, it does not yet extend to the world of professional cycling more generally. With the possible exception of the Tour Down Under, how many average Australian sports fans could name a single cycling race outside of le Tour? We also need to be careful about what an Australian pro cycling team will represent and where its talents would lie. It is hard to see how an Australian pro cycling team could be focused on winning Grand Tours. It would be far more likely to be focused on one day races and points classifications on longer tours for anything like the foreseeable future. An Australian pro team will not suddenly bring a burst of Australian dominance at the Tour de France GC or other similar events. I'm all in favour of Green Edge Cycling and wish it all the best, but we all need to be careful about our expectations as to what this will really bring to Australian cycling.
Decs
Guest
Interesting: http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/greenedge-parts-ways-with-mike-mckay
Bill
Guest
I think you will find the Green Edge backer would be Gerry Ryan from Jayco not Andrew, just as an aside Gerry's horse won the Melbourne Cup last year
Daniels
Guest
What you need to know before getting too excited about this, Cadel Evans is staying with BMC next year, and they are extremely interested in keeping him around for the rest of his career. They have also said that no rider will have his contract bought out, which i think will mean that they wont be able have a full Aussie team, it will need other nationalities