Having worked on his own commercial projects in pro
cycling over three decades, Darach McQuaid has now become a key figure in the one
of the sport’s biggest squads, Team BikeExchange, formerly Mitchelton-Scott.
Last year, after a period of change at the team when it
was almost sold to a Spanish group, Dubliner McQuaid and South African Brent
Copeland were appointed chairman and general manager respectively.
“It’s not a position, historically speaking, that a lot of teams have had,” McQuaid said of being chairman of the Australian squad.
“I’m essentially involved in all aspects of the team with Brent and am really enjoying working with him.
“I’d be in the office in Lugano for two or three days a week. Brent and I would agree on major decisions together and I have responsibility for the commercial side of the team as well."
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He says working on the team can be very varied, though there are no prizes for guessing one of the key issues at present.
“Today, for example, we had a two-hour video call session with all the heads of our departments – with our doctors, performance staff and so on.
"We were looking at how we mitigate Covid-19 because we’ve a training camp starting in Valencia in Spain on January 12th.
“So my role is across all areas of the team, which is a men’s and women’s team and we’ve 105-110 staff, with 27 male riders and 13 female.”
McQuaid, a former international cyclist himself, is well
known in Irish and international cycling circles having previously worked on
the Nissan Classic, the Tour de France visit to Ireland in 1998 and having
organised the Tour of Ireland professional stage race.
He also worked on the Tour de France for most of the
2000s with US TV channel NBC and with his sister Ann publishing magazines for
the Tour de France, Tour DuPont and the UCI.
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In more recent years he was one of the key figures in
bringing the Giro d’Italia to Ireland in 2014, which was followed by the Gran
Fondo Northern Ireland for four years after the race visited Irish shores.
In the last couple of years – before being appointed chairman of the team last year - McQuaid began working for GreenEdge Cycling, which owns Team BikeExchange; an association he says stretches way back into his past ventures.
While working on the Tour for NBC McQuaid became friendly
with John Trevorrow, a former Australian pro cyclist. And when Trevorrow
brought at Australian team to McQuaid’s Tour of Ireland in 2007 and 2008 it was
sponsored by South Australian Tourism and Jayco, a camper van company owned by
Australian businessman Gerry Ryan.
When Ryan, who has a very long history supporting
cycling, came to Ireland with the team McQuaid first got to know him and kept
in touch in the years that followed.
“Gerry would have come over to Ireland a lot down the
years since I first met him in a hotel in Killarney on the Tour of Ireland,”
said McQuaid. “He has a lot of horses in Ireland and he has brought his Jayco traders
to Ireland for trips, so he really likes Ireland,” he added of Ryan, a
successful race horse owner who won his second Melbourne Cup last year and who
founded GreenEdge Cycling in 2011.
In 2017 McQuaid began working for Ryan in helping to
develop the commercial side of his WorldTour outfit, leading to his appointment
as chairman last summer.
Based in Italy in recent years – McQuaid’s partner Paola is Italian – the Irishman is effectively Ryan’s representative in all matters across the team.
While Covid-19 greatly complicated his first six months in the job, and is set to continue to challenge cycling, McQuaid said he is really enjoying it so far and very hopeful the team would sign Irish riders during his tenure.
“Gerry’s family is of Irish ancestry and obviously I’m
Irish. And we have Chris Juul-Jensen, who was brought up in Ireland, as one of
our riders. John Keegan, the former Irish team mechanic, also works for us. So
there’s a bit of an Irish flavour in the team now I guess you could say. But if
we could get our hands on an Irish rider over the next few years… that would be
brilliant.
“My nephews, Gary and Andrew (both cycling agents), have
got their ears to the ground and I’d love to see some Irish riders in the team,
I’d be determined to get one or two in. We went as far as Trinidad and Tobago
to sign Teniel Campbell for this year and we’ve had
riders from Ethiopia, Estonia, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, you name it.
“Ireland, you could say, is one of the only major cycling nations that doesn’t feature on our roster, male or female. You always have to act on these things from a performance stand point, but I would always be sure that if Irish riders are there… they’ll be in the mix, our sports directors will know about them.”
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