Fabian Cancellara has finally revealed his destination for 2011, and it's not a surprise.
"I'll race with the Schlecks," said the four-time time trial World Champion to Sporza today.
The superstar Swiss made the announcement at an awards ceremony in Brussels. Cancellara received yet another accolade for his sterling season, this time, the honor came from the international cycling press and was handed over by UCI president Pat McQuaid and cycling's greatest, Eddy Merckx.
The 29 year old enjoyed arguably the most successful season of his career from start to finish with an overall win at the Tour of Oman to kick off the season, followed be wins at the E3 Prijs, Tour of Flanders, and Paris-Roubaix to cap off a golden Spring campaign. He returned with time trial victory at the Tour de Suisse, then went to the Tour de France, won both time trials and spent almost a week in yellow. After that, only his fourth World Championship victory was left to take care of.
It has long been considered a virtual certainty that it would be the Luxembourg Pro Cycling Project, but only today was it officially announced by the rider himself. With Cancellara's own announcement, the Luxembourg Pro Cycling Project is complete heading into next season, and there's no doubt that it will be a superpower in all of the biggest races in 2011.
The only real question is whether Cancellara will actually go through with the hints and mentions of this offseason. Cancellara has recently expressed a desire to pursue new goals with his new team - namely focusing on the Ardennes Classics. It will be interesting to see if Cancellara will get the chance to target the next wave of aims in 2011, as the new team will no doubt be disappointed if the world's best cobbled racer eschews starts on favored terrain for a big question mark in the Ardennes a few weeks later.
The Luxembourg Pro Cycling Project will be the fourth team in Cancellara's career. He started out with Mapei in 2001 and 2002, then moved to Fassa Bortolo (2003-2005), and following the folding of the Fassa Bortolo team, he moved over to Bjarne Riis's Team CSC in 2006 and remained there until the end of the 2010 season.