Cyclingnews.com has a newsflash story concerning a new professional road cycling team to begin racing in 2010 (Britons announce professional road squad), Team Sky. Clearly building on evidence of success on the track over the last few years, British Cycling have moved to set up a British-based road squad. Sponsorship for four years is from Sky, who already play significant role in the development of UK cycling.
Dave Brailsford clearly has a number of riders targeted for the 25 man squad:
Brailsford was reluctant to disclose the make-up of the roster, but he did confirm that non-British riders would be part of the set-up. "I can't go into the names of staff or riders at this time. I know there's a lot of speculation but we can't go further than that at the moment.
"There will be a core of British riders but the team will not just include home-grown talent," he added. "We'll need international riders and I don't ever envisage us having only British riders, but at the heart of the team will be a very British ethos: a British HQ, British staff and a British core."
An initial squad of around 25 riders will be recruited during the 2009 calendar year. They will be supported by a team of coaches, technicians and support staff from across the sport, many of whom already work throughout the year with British elite and developing riders.
The aim is to start racing at the 2010 Tour Down Under. Perhaps this is the beginning of a new era for British cycling. I do wonder whether the skills that have been employed in developing track success lie mostly in the more controllable forms of the sport, such as pursuit, time trial, olympic sprint etc, and making such a huge impact in the more rough and tumble forms of cycle sport might be harder to achieve, particularly set against high media expectations (it seemed to me that Brailsford was trying to pre-empt the usual "Tour de France questions").