Former Australian professionals Neil Stephens and Matt White have been confirmed for important roles with the GreenEdge team in 2012, with the duo joining four others as the staff who will direct riders in the races to come.
Stephens competed as a pro for fourteen seasons, starting with Peugeot-Michelin in 1985 and ended with Festina in 1988. He then went into the management area of the sport, working as directeur sportif for a number of teams including Liberty Seguros and Caisse d’Epargne.
White also had a long pro career, stepping up to the paid ranks in 1998 with Amore & Vita and also racing with the Vini Caldirola, US Postal, Cofidis and Discovery Channel teams. He retired at the end of 2007 and took up a three years stint as directeur sportif to the Garmin/Slipstream setup.
Both have acted as professional men’s road co-ordinators for Cycling Australia’s High Performance Program, and Stephens was heavily involved in setting up the new GreenEdge team.
The duo will be joined by the Frenchman Lionel Marie, who directed a very successful Garmin-Cervélo team during this year’s Tour de France, plus the Lorenzo Lapage and two Italians, Vittorio Algeri and Daniele Nardello.
The latter three also have good experience, with Lapage having worked with Astana, Algeri with Milram and Nardello with Geox TMC.
General manager Shayne Bannan said that they would play very important roles, and had been carefully chosen because of that. “Our line-up of sports directors reflect a very important part of our approach to building this team: to gather experienced and talented people in the sport whose competences compliment each other,” he explained.
“We want GreenEDGE to be a team where we can offer our riders the best framework in order to take the next step in their career. I think we have gathered a group of sports directors who will be a key element in this ambition.”
He added that he was encouraged by what he saw at the recent camp in Australia. The team will begin racing early in 2012, with the Santos Tour Down Under being its first WorldTour event.
GreenEdge for 2012:
Jack Bobridge (AUS)
Cameron Meyer (AUS)
Travis Meyer (AUS)
Stuart O’Grady (AUS)
Pieter Weening (NED)
Sebastian Langeveld (NED)
Simon Gerrans (AUS)
Jens Mouris (NED)
Simon Clarke (AUS)
Svein Tuft (CAN)
Baden Cooke (AUS)
Matt Wilson (AUS)
Tomas Vaitkus (LITH)
Daniel Teklehaimanot (ERITREA)
Robbie McEwen (AUS)
Michael Albasini (SWI)
Matt Goss (AUS)
Jens Keukeleire (BEL)
Leigh Howard (AUS)
Wesley Sulzberger (AUS)
Allan Davis (AUS)
Brett Lancaster (AUS)
Mitchell Docker (AUS)
Julian Dean (NZ)
Fumiyuki Beppu (JPN)
Christian Meier (CAN)
Daryl Impey (RSA)
Luke Durbridge (AUS)
Michael Hepburn (AUS)
AIdis Kroupis (LITH)