Bike brand musical chairs: Mitchelton, Jumbo, and Sunweb swap sponsors
Three big teams have announced new bike partners for the 2021 season in what amounts to a three-way swap between the squads.
The team currently known as Mitchelton-Scott will go from riding Scott bikes to riding Bianchi, Jumbo-Visma will move from Bianchi to Cervélo, and Sunweb will move from Cervélo to Scott.
All three announcements, which apply to both the men’s and women’s teams of all three squads, arrived at around the same time on Monday.
The GreenEdge organization, currently Mitchelton-Scott, has ridden Scott bikes since 2012, and Scott has been a title sponsor for the team since 2017.
As the GreenEdge team moves over to Bianchi, a name change is expected for next season, although it is not yet known what that new name will be.
“We have witnessed the incredible success of riders using Bianchi equipment and are inspired by their plans for the future,” team owner Gerry Ryan said. “The UCI WorldTour is consistently seeing more technology innovations and we are confident our collaboration with Bianchi will result in our riders racing on the most cutting edge road and time trial bicycles that will deliver many victories in the world’s biggest races.”
Jumbo-Visma’s move to Cervélo comes after seven seasons with Bianchi; the Italian brand came on board during the Belkin iteration of the squad as it was going through a rebuilding process following the departure of Rabobank as a sponsor.
Cervélo, although headquartered in Canada, is owned by Dutch company Pon Holdings BV, as Jumbo-Visma pointed out in the team’s press release.
Sunweb’s move to Scott comes towards the end of two seasons on Cervélo bikes.
“We are confident that this partnership will deliver from the start some fast, exciting and successful racing with both the men and women programs,” Scott Sports vice president Pascal Ducrot said in a statement. “Our engineering team is looking forward to work closely with Team Sunweb’s engineering and biomechanic specialists to integrate their input and feedback in the development of the next generation of our road bikes.”
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