Jonathan Vaughters has had huge WorldTour success with Garmin and now Cannondale. But next year he will be involved with a team that will only sign riders in college or doing apprenticeships.
An exciting new – and long overdue – concept has just been rolled out by the people who own the Cannondale WorldTour team and the Drapac Capital Partners ProContinental level squad.
Combined, the plan to launch a new UCI-registered Continental level which will begin racing all over Europe next year though it will be registered in Australia.
And one really interesting condition for all of the riders who sign contracts with them is that they must enrol in university courses or do apprenticeships in the off season.
The project aims to put education on a par with bike riding, in order that those riders who do not go into lucrative pro careers they will have something to fall back on but in order that that young athletes developed as well rounded people.
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The announcement of the new project was made by Drapac last night and it stressed that going to college or doing an apprenticeship would be mandatory for all of the riders on its roster.
“I’ve seen too many great people dedicate their lives to cycling and they’ve totally ignored everything else,” said Michael Drapac, who founded the Drapac team.
“And then something happens, a crash or they aren’t able to move up in the ranks, something. And they have enormous difficulty recovering as human beings.
“We seek to prevent that. We seek to prevent athletes being used as disposable assets.”
Working with Drapac is Slipstream, the company that owns the Cannondale team and which has Jonathan Vaughters as its chief executive.
Both Drapac and Slipstream began life with an emphasis on developing young riders and Drapac in particular has also has said it was also hopeful of “developing complete athletes as opposed to one-dimensional bike racers”.
“Michael and I have been friends for over five years,” said Vaughters.
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“We share a lot of the same philosophies and visions, and we’ve worked together on other projects.
“I’ve been helping him scout potential investments for his real estate company in the Western U.S., for example.
“I look forward to working with him and creating a unique development team for riders who want to divide their time between studies and moving their way up to the WorldTour.
“This team will race in Europe basically tailored around when these kids are on break. When they’re not on break then they’ll be doing local races around where they’re going to university and training.”
Vaughters said he did not believe spending time doing an apprenticeship or doing to college would negatively impact rider development.
“It benefits some guys tremendously to be able to explore intellectual and physical avenues at the same time. We just want to make it easier for the right athlete to strike that balance.
“Do I think that you can successfully identify talent that can succeed in the WorldTour when riders are dividing their time between studies and racing and training? Yes, I do,” he said.
“In fact I’ve seen many examples where highly intelligent riders perform better when they have one physical and one intellectual focus.
“It balances them out. It can lead to better performance. A great example of an up-and-comer in the United States who I think is doing this pretty well is Sepp Kuss — he won the mountain-top finish at Redlands and he’s a university student.”
Kuss is enrolled at the University of Colorado at Boulder currently, studying advertising. He says he may or may not turn professional.
Another successful example is the Cannondale Pro Cycling Team’s Mike Woods, a neo pro at 29 years old after finishing a degree at the University of Michigan and switching to cycling after a foot injury derailed his elite-level running career. Larry Warbasse also graduated from the University of Michigan and now rides for IAM Cycling.
Drapac said it was unacceptable that riders who tried to break into a big time career derailed the remainder of their life when their cycling ambitions weren’t realised.
“Cycling has been and continues to be a sport that uses up and quickly discards riders without looking out for their futures beyond results and immediate salaries,” Drapac said.
“We’re going to keep working to make it a more sustainable business and sport from both athletic and intellectual perspectives.”
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