One of the most successful riders in the current peloton will end his career midway through next season, with Robbie McEwen announcing that he will race for half a year with the new GreenEdge team, then switch to an advisory role.
The 39 year old rider is moving to the new Australian team to both help it gain early results and then to guide and motivate its younger riders, playing the same sort of role that Erik Zabel did in helping HTC Highroad’s Mark Cavendish to his Milan-Sanremo win and other triumphs.
McEwen, who is currently racing with RadioShack, has won three green jerseys, twelve Tour de France stage wins, a dozen stage victories in both the Giro d’Italia and the Tour Down Under, five editions of Paris-Brussels plus two Australian road race titles.
While he’s not as quick as he used to be due to age, he will bring a lot to the team in terms of guidance and experience.
“My role is to ride for the first half of the season, to give me the opportunity to start my position from within the group, a bit like being a captain-coach on the field in football,” McEwen said, speaking of what will be his seventeenth year in the peloton.
“On the road you can see a lot more and are likely to have a bigger impact on the younger guys and you can lead by example.
“After that I’ll move into a role, around the time of the Tour de France, to be a tactical advisor. It’s a similar role to the one Erik Zabel has been doing for the past few years at HTC-Highroad, scouting the finishes and informing the guys of what’s coming up and what I think might be the best way to tackle it. It takes a pretty keen eye and a lot of experience to be able to give the right information to the riders and they need to be able to trust your judgement 100 per cent.
“If I’m going to send them into a blind corner full gas then they have to be able to trust my judgement when I say that. It’s a role I’m really looking forward to getting into.”
The team will also feature another highly experienced rider, Stuart O’Grady. He too will guide the riders, with the two older competitors collaborating to pass as much knowledge as possible on to the younger competitors on the team.
The idea is to try to help those riders learn as much as possible as quickly as possible, getting them up to speed within the peloton and helping the team to grow.
“The aim is a fairly simple one, to win races,” explained McEwen. “I think we can achieve some big things in the sprints and the classics with the group of riders we’re pulling together. There’s a good mix between experienced riders and young guys ready to take the next step. Plus there’s a good bunch of foreign riders that will really compliment our Australian group.”
He said that he believed the team would be successful right away.
For McEwen, racing at almost 40 years of age, the chance to be part of what is hoped to be the first-ever Australian WorldTour team gives him the motivation he needs at this late point in his career. So too working alongside chief sponsor Gerry Ryan, general manager Shayne Bannan and directeur sportif Neil Stephens, who have helped his career. “To finally get the opportunity to be part of an Aussie team, who wouldn’t be excited?” he enthused. “We all get really geed-up to ride as part of an Australian team at World Championships, the Commonwealth Games and Olympic Games. We have a good time together, we ride well together, and now it’s going to be that scenario every single time we throw the leg over the bike.
“A few of my future colleagues, and future team-mates, have already said this is a dream that has been 20-years in the making and I absolutely want to be a part of that whole experience.”
Multiple media reports are also linking Japanese rider Fumi Beppu to the team, although this is yet to be confirmed. Beppu is currently competing alongside McEwen as part of RadioShack.