The more I hear, the more I'm convinced: this is certainly Australia's year in cycling. Despite being all the way "Down Under", we're following up a maiden Tour de France win with our own first-ever ProTour cycling team - and what a bloody good team it's shaping up to be!
Despite the transfer season still not having opened, news is filtering through the cognoscenti of the line-up of the new Aussie team, which since the last update seems to include every Australian rider on the ProTour circuit.
Rumours were floating about the two big Aussie names the team was looking to sign - Robbie McEwen and Stuey O'Grady. While not a peep has been heard from the Radioshack sprinter, Leopard Trek's O'Grady has indeed signed to GreenEDGE and is probably looking forward to riding in his national team for the first time ever. As suspected, young Tassie rider Richie Porte has re-signed with Team Saxobank Sungard, and as expected BMC's Cadel Evans has also renewed his contract there.
But almost every other Aussie in the professional peloton seems to be jumping on board. Two of my three top picks of the young Aussies were announced as being headhunted by GreenEDGE, and to my utter delight all three of them have been signed! Jack Bobridge and brother team Cameron and Travis Meyer, who have more world titles between them than I can remember anymore (four, I think - two to Cameron and one to each of the others) have all jumped ship from Team Garmin-Cervelo to GreenEDGE, where I'm hopeful at least one of them will be given the chance to make their debut in a grand tour.
While all these signings were foreshadowed if not expected, a new name has appeared on the radar - Simon Gerrans! Team Sky's 'Gerro' is returning to home soil with his national team. As for the other Aussies, Mark Renshaw has left the folding HTC-Highroad team to join Dutch team Rabobank but there is no word on the rest, meaning riders like Matty Goss are still up for grabs.
There are of course a few international riders who've also been signed. Promising young Eritrean neo Daniel Teklehaymanot was the very first rider to join the team, while Dutch talents Pieter Weening and Sebastian Langeveld have both left their national team to help boost GreenEDGE's Spring Classics profile.
Ironically enough, in their guide to rider transfers for this season, Cycling News had to retrospectively add GreenEDGE to the list of teams signing riders due to the large number of riders they were pinching from the other teams. All bar one of these teams are ProTour teams who rode the Tour de France this year. Is it just me, or is this a very promising omen for EDGE?
Rumours were floating about the two big Aussie names the team was looking to sign - Robbie McEwen and Stuey O'Grady. While not a peep has been heard from the Radioshack sprinter, Leopard Trek's O'Grady has indeed signed to GreenEDGE and is probably looking forward to riding in his national team for the first time ever. As suspected, young Tassie rider Richie Porte has re-signed with Team Saxobank Sungard, and as expected BMC's Cadel Evans has also renewed his contract there.
But almost every other Aussie in the professional peloton seems to be jumping on board. Two of my three top picks of the young Aussies were announced as being headhunted by GreenEDGE, and to my utter delight all three of them have been signed! Jack Bobridge and brother team Cameron and Travis Meyer, who have more world titles between them than I can remember anymore (four, I think - two to Cameron and one to each of the others) have all jumped ship from Team Garmin-Cervelo to GreenEDGE, where I'm hopeful at least one of them will be given the chance to make their debut in a grand tour.
While all these signings were foreshadowed if not expected, a new name has appeared on the radar - Simon Gerrans! Team Sky's 'Gerro' is returning to home soil with his national team. As for the other Aussies, Mark Renshaw has left the folding HTC-Highroad team to join Dutch team Rabobank but there is no word on the rest, meaning riders like Matty Goss are still up for grabs.
There are of course a few international riders who've also been signed. Promising young Eritrean neo Daniel Teklehaymanot was the very first rider to join the team, while Dutch talents Pieter Weening and Sebastian Langeveld have both left their national team to help boost GreenEDGE's Spring Classics profile.
Ironically enough, in their guide to rider transfers for this season, Cycling News had to retrospectively add GreenEDGE to the list of teams signing riders due to the large number of riders they were pinching from the other teams. All bar one of these teams are ProTour teams who rode the Tour de France this year. Is it just me, or is this a very promising omen for EDGE?
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