Triple world time trial champion Michael Rogers has been confirmed as moving to Team Sky, completing a transfer which has been tipped to happen for several weeks.
The 2010 Tour of California winner will add his strength to the British ProTour team, which wants to step things up a level next season and chase bigger victories.
Rogers has been in fine form this year, taking overall victory in California, winning the Vuelta a Andalucía, finishing second overall in the Critérium International and third in both the Montepaschi Strade Bianche and the Tour de Romandie.
The Australian rider has spent the past five years competing with the T-Mobile/Team Highroad/HTC Columbia setup, heading there after earlier racing with Mapei and Quick Step Davitamon.
He won his first world title in 2003, moving up from the silver medal position after David Millar admitted EPO use. He then took gold the following two years, before concentrating more on road racing and a push towards becoming a Tour de France contender.
Rogers’ best performance in the Tour came in 2006 when he finished second on stage three and ninth overall. One year later he was in a break and looked likely to take the yellow jersey when he suffered a bad crash on the descent of Cormet de Roseland, breaking his collarbone and being forced to drop out of the race.
He was then sidelined from racing for a while due to Epstein Barr virus, bouncing back with several strong results.
Rogers was once seen as a possible winner of the Tour de France but gave up on those hopes when he suffered badly in this year’s event. He has said that his career path from now on is to target victories in shorter stage races, but his experience and strength means that he will be a very good team-mate to those Team Sky riders who are themselves chasing Tour de France success. He will also have the firepower to go for stages in the race.
Team Sky has signed several new riders for 2010, including Alex Dowsett, Xabier Zandio and Rigoberto Uran. Apart from Rogers, it will feature several Australians in 2011: CJ Sutton, Matt Hayman and Simon Gerrans are already part of the line-up.