Having been widely presumed to be continuing with the RadioShack structure next year after it moves across to the Leopard Trek team, Chris Horner has today confirmed that he has finalised the terms. The Japanese-born American revealed the news on his Twitter account rather than via more traditional channels.
“It's official - I'm all signed up and ready to go for two more years on the new @teamradioshack!” he wrote. “Looking forward to it!”
Although he will turn 40 later this month, Horner’s last couple of seasons have been his strongest to date. He was the best-placed American rider in last year’s Tour de France, netting tenth in Paris, and also won the Vuelta al Pais Vasco, placed second in the Giro di Sardegna and fourth in the Tour of California. Three top ten placings in the Ardennes Classics underlined that he was also stronger than before in one-day races.
This season continued that sort of form, with a stage win and overall victory in the Tour of California being his best result of 2011. He was runner-up to team-mate Andreas Klöden in the Vuelta al Pais Vasco and a solid fourth overall in the Volta a Catalunya, boosting expectations that a strong ride was on the cards in the Tour de France.
However Horner was hit by the same bad luck which devastated the RadioShack team, crashing hard on stage nine, ending up with concussion and being forced to pull out of the race. Then on the last day of July he was admitted to hospital suffering from a potentially lethal blood clot to his lung, forcing him to take blood thinners and end his season prematurely.
Horner will be one of several RadioShack riders moving across to the Leopard Trek team, as well as the sponsors and general manager Johan Bruyneel. He will race alongside the Schleck brothers plus Andreas Klöden, as well as Fabian Cancellara and several other of the team’s well-known names.
The team will likely be known as RadioShack-Nissan, according to a UCI list of the teams applying for registration for 2012. It had hoped to have Trek also in that name, but UCI rules limit ProTeams to having two sponsors in the title.