Matt Goss is motivated and ready to make his debut for the Australian ProTour team GreenEdge Cycling, which races for the first time as a team on New Year’s Day, when the first leg of the Jayco Bay Cycling Classic gets underway in Australia.
Goss joins another former winner of the Classic, Robbie McEwen, on the five-man squad. Leigh Howard, Mitchell Docker, and Wesley Sulzberger each make their debuts with the team as well.
Excitement surrounding Australia’s first WorldTour team is running high, and perhaps it is most appropriate that the team races for the first time in its home country, during the Australian summer, on the first day of the New Year.
“It is that bit more exciting with the new GreenEdge team, and I think that excitement spreads to everyone, not just with the bike riders, with the season starting so soon,” Goss said according to The Herald Sun.
“There is always a bit of pressure, more so from yourself.”
While they haven’t quite entered with the bravado of the British Team Sky, which struggled to meet heavy expectations in 2010, GreenEdge Cycling will hope to start winning early and often, and may look to be more successful in single-day races, as opposed to Grand Tours. The team lacks a legitimate three-week race contender in its first season, and Goss is hoping for early-season wins to help relieve some of the pressure.
“When you go out there you always want to do well, but I think everyone is going to be super motivated to do well, especially being GreenEdge’s first race,” he added. “Hopefully it doesn’t take us too long to get the first runs on the board. It would be nice to get a win on January 1.”
GreenEdge Cycling’s new team director Matt White, formerly of Garmin-Cervelo, echoed his sprint star’s sentiments on winning.
“Every time we go to race we want to win and we want to be successful,” White stated. “We are going to race an entertaining style of tactics, we want to always be aggressive but we want to win and we will be starting from day one [because] we want to be a successful team.
“All of these races in Australia do mean so much to us. We’re not here for very long and only get to race in January and October so we really want to leave a mark on the Australian domestic season.”
The Jayco Bay Cycling Classic is a four-day series of criteriums, with points given to top finishers each day. After winning the first and fourth stages last year, Goss came out the champion, with two points in hand over Michael Matthews.
Repeating will not be easy for Goss, as he faces competition from Baden Cooke, Allan Davis, Chris Sutton, Heinrich Haussler, Greg Henderson, and others.