In ten days’ time, the most recent American UCI Professional Street Group, Trendy Journey Professional Biking, will get its first actual style of world-class competitors.
Lining up on the AlUla Tour in Saudi Arabia, the programme’s debut comes early and with out illusions. Whereas the roster options ample expertise, this isn’t a group of headline names, nor a undertaking anticipating instantaneous outcomes. However for a group nonetheless in its infancy, the invitation alone issues; a primary alternative to see how the group’s ambitions maintain up when positioned straight within the deep finish.
“It’s an enormous deal to be invited to an ASO race as a first-year group,” group founder George Hincapie tells Biking Weekly. “We don’t take that flippantly. We all know we’re lining up in opposition to some very massive names. For me, what issues is that we don’t get pushed round, that we trip collectively, and that we make an announcement about how we race.
“I’m not telling the blokes we have to win AlUla or win our first race. I simply need us to trip collectively as a group, to study, to belief one another. If we try this, I’ll be completely happy. Any outcomes on high of which can be a bonus.”
For the reason that group was launched final June, it has been, in Hincapie’s phrases, “full gasoline.” Relentless journey, conferences with race organisers, conversations with companions, recruitment calls, and a marketing campaign to persuade everybody that Trendy Journey is critical, credible and price investing in.
“It’s been lots,” Hincapie says. “However now we’ve acquired a extremely nice group, not simply riders, however workers too, and issues are working easily. I’m fairly pleased with the way it’s all coming collectively.”
It’s an bold purpose, framed within the language of “hope,” “imaginative and prescient” and a “new period.” However the programme itself is rooted in one thing extra pragmatic: a clearly outlined construction, skilled management, and a protracted runway that prioritises sustainability over rapid outcomes.
“I’ve been fairly completely happy at residence,” he says. “Doing our grand fondos and the podcasts and spending time with the household. However this [project] actually appealed to me as a result of it is a long-term plan. I’ve a six-to-eight-year dedication, and it actually provides me time to plan. It would not give me a lot stress to go after solely ends in the primary couple of years. The truth that now we have that runway provides me a variety of hope.”
‘I’ve nothing to cover’
For Hincapie, committing to a long-term undertaking meant surrounding it early with folks he trusts to assist construct it fastidiously.
The possession group consists of George and Richard Hincapie alongside longtime pal and enterprise marketing consultant Dustin Tougher. The administration and efficiency construction reads like a reunion tour of American biking’s latest previous, with Bobby Julich as efficiency coach and former WorldTour execs Alex Howes and Joey Rosskopf, alongside home stalwart Ty Magner, entering into directeur sportif roles.
Issue Bikes has signed on as a long-term accomplice, with David Millar personally concerned in shaping the undertaking.
If these names ring sure bells for you, you’re not alone. These are names tied to an period of biking that also provokes scepticism, to say the least, and the remark part on earlier articles concerning the group mirrored that.
“I don’t learn the feedback,” he says. “However I hear about them. They usually’re really very motivating.”
His story is public. He has acknowledged previous doping. He has even written a guide about it. He believes, firmly, that he’s additionally a part of biking’s transition away from that tradition.
“I’ve nothing to cover,” he says. “Even after I get [negative] feedback, I do know what I’ve achieved for this sport, and I do know that I am not going to let that hamper my objectives and my hopes for the game.”
That perception turns into private when he talks about his son, now 17 and near turning skilled.
“I do know he’ll by no means need to make the selections I needed to make,” Hincapie says, and the identical goes for the riders on his group. “It’s a totally totally different tradition now, and our riders know that.”
Hincapie factors out that the know-how, coaching and diet are so superior now that “it is outmoded any sort of sketchy stuff that went on again within the day.”
Meet the Group
For all of the acquainted names behind the scenes, the riders themselves are a lot much less recognisable, and that’s by design.
“We don’t have enormous names on the roster,” Hincapie says. “However now we have guys we consider we will help attain their full potential.”
Trendy Journey’s roster displays its mission. Twelve of the 21 riders are American, starting from seasoned home execs like Robin Carpenter and Scott McGill to uncooked teenage expertise simply starting to check themselves internationally.
There’s a deliberate mixture of riders who’ve survived group closures, riders stepping up from improvement squads, riders whose careers have stalled, and people whose careers haven’t even began but.
“I’m enthusiastic about Riley Pickrell,” Hincapie says, pointing to the Canadian sprinter who arrives from Israel–Premier Tech. “He didn’t get many alternatives final 12 months, however when he did, he took them. We’re all-in for him when he has an opportunity.”
Then there’s Brit Leo Hayter, the previous Ineos rider who will return to street racing after stepping away from the professional peloton to handle psychological well being challenges.
Others he mentions with equal enthusiasm embody South-African Stefan De Bod, who’s spent six years on the WorldTour; Byron Munton, one other South African who netted a stage win and third general on the Tour of Portugal final 12 months; and younger People Cole Kessler and Ezra Caudell, with a variety of uncooked expertise and U23 jersey potential.
“There is a bunch of names that I am enthusiastic about that have not actually achieved something but, however I believe they are going to be names that we are able to observe sooner or later,” Hincapie says.
Learn up on the total roster, right here.
Hincapie says his strategy to constructing the group has been formed by expertise. He has lived via small programmes changing into giants, pointing to Group BMC for example.
“I do know what it takes,” he says. “Clearly, it takes cash and it takes a very good management group behind it, however hopefully that have that I acquired whereas in my racing days will assist get the group to the place I would like it to be.”
That additionally consists of the group’s tradition: a bus the place riders snort, a group constructed on belief and a spot the place the game’s relentless calls for are balanced by enjoyment.
“The very best groups I used to be on weren’t simply profitable,” he says. “They had been enjoyable. That issues greater than folks realise.”
Why now?
American street biking is fragile. Races disappear as usually as they seem. Growth pathways are scarce. And the game has lengthy struggled to recapture the thrill of the Greg LeMond period or of Hincapie’s years racing alongside Lance Armstrong.
Hincapie sees that as a chance greater than a deterrent.
“I believe it is pretty much as good a time as any to start out a group and from scratch,” he says. “American street racing is just not so scorching in the mean time, and hopefully, having a group with a variety of American riders goes to assist invigorate the game within the US, and get extra folks into the game.
“We’ve acquired a number of world-class skilled American cyclists on the scene already, and hopefully this group will assist with that as properly.”
Requested why People ought to nonetheless care about biking, his reply is easy.
“Biking may be very thrilling, very onerous to foretell,” he says. “There’s hazard, there’s ways concerned. It has a little bit little bit of all the pieces. It takes the very best issues from all sports activities and makes it into one.”
Current moments of U.S. success, like Sepp Kuss’s 2023 Vuelta win, have proven what’s nonetheless potential. Sustaining that curiosity, Hincapie believes, comes again to illustration and visibility.
The group’s race schedule stays obscure. They’ll race in Europe, wherever invites come. North America, wherever racing nonetheless lives or is being rebuilt, such because the Maryland Biking Basic and the rebirth of the Philly Biking Basic. Street races, gravel occasions, no matter helps the group be seen.
“We’re going again to the fundamentals,” he says. “Hustling our manner into races. Making our presence recognized. Constructing from there.”