Linda Jackson, founder and CEO of To the Prime Biking LLC, confirmed to Cyclingnews that EF Training-TICBO-SVB will fold on the finish of 2023. She additionally confirmed that the workforce’s present Girls’s WorldTeam licence is not going to be assumed by one other workforce going ahead and that every one riders and workers are free to hitch new groups in 2024.
“It’s with deep remorse that I affirm that I’ve not been in a position to safe the sponsorship wanted to take care of my world tour licence,” Jackson stated.
“Looking for sponsorship was simply too tough following SVB’s collapse in March, given the general financial setting on the time. I let my riders know early on that they need to be searching for different alternatives as my predominant precedence was to be clear and help them with transitions to different world tour groups versus dragging out the sponsorship hunt to the eleventh hour.”
The workforce misplaced long-time sponsors Tibco and Silicon Valley Financial institution attributable to “current financial challenges and occasions” after the financial institution’s collapse earlier this yr. The 2 corporations had supported the ladies’s workforce, run by Jackson, since 2008, whereas Cannondale has been her workforce’s bike accomplice since 2020.
EF Training joined Jackson’s programme as a co-title sponsor in the beginning of the 2022 season and thru to the tip of 2023. Nevertheless, the EF Training-TIBCO-SVB workforce has all the time been owned and managed by Jackson and her administration firm To the Prime Biking LLC.
Whereas the EF Training-EasyPost males’s WorldTour workforce was initially managed by the Slipstream organisation, it’s now owned and managed by EF Professional Biking.
EF Professional Biking introduced in June that they are going to begin a brand new ladies’s workforce, racing as EF Training-Cannondale, and that it’ll start as a Continental ladies’s workforce in 2024.
Cyclingnews requested EF Professional Biking if that they had tried to imagine EF Training-TIBCO-SVB’s Girls’s WorldTeam licence from Jackson and To the Prime Biking LLC, or if the 2 groups can be working collectively in some capability. Nevertheless, a consultant of EF Professional Biking stated all questions relating to the workforce’s licence ought to be addressed to Jackson.
Jackson confirmed to Cyclingnews that there shall be no hyperlinks between her EF Training-TIBCO-SVB WorldTour workforce and the brand new EF Training-Cannondale Continental workforce in 2024 and that her present programme will finish.
EF Training-TIBCO-SVB’s European Supervisor, Christel Herremans, informed Sporza that the workers of Jackson’s present workforce should not permitted to work for the brand new EF Training-Cannondale workforce for as much as two years, which was a clause that shaped a part of a signed contractual settlement between the workers and workforce.
Jackson informed Cyclingnews that whereas she is just not at liberty to debate contractual agreements, neither she nor EF is imposing any contract clause that might stop a rider or workers member of EF Training-TIBCO-SVB from being employed at one other programme in 2024.
“I’ve simply introduced that I’ve been unable to safe sponsorship to resume my WorldTour licence, and presently don’t have any plans to function a Continental workforce both,” Jackson stated.
“As you may see, the hiring of Veronica [Ewers], and presumably different riders, neither I, nor EF, are imposing any contract clause that might stop them from hiring EF-TIBCO-SVB workers or riders and they’re free to contact the brand new EF Training-Cannondale workforce relating to work for subsequent season. I’ve no say or affect on which members, riders or workers, from this yr’s workforce they select to rent for 2024 and past.”
Ewers was the one rider with a present contract with the EF Training-TIBCO-SVB workforce that had a contract by 2025, whereas all different riders had been contracted to the tip of 2023.
Ewers was the primary large signing introduced to the brand new ladies’s workforce EF Training-Cannondale, set to launch as a second-tier workforce subsequent yr. The workforce has since introduced 4 extra riders, together with Coryn Labecki, Nina Kessler, Noemi Rüegg and Megan Armitage, together with its common supervisor Esra Tromp.
Lengthy-time ladies’s workforce involves an finish
Jackson is without doubt one of the most profitable feminine skilled cyclists to have come from Canada, and since retiring in 2000 devoted the following chapter of her profession to creating alternatives for American and Canadian ladies to pursue their Olympic desires.
Generally known as the longest-running ladies’s workforce in North America, EF Training-TIBCO-SVB succeeded for nearly 20 years as one of the outstanding groups from the US, with Linda Jackson on the helm of the programme. She is without doubt one of the solely ladies to personal and handle a present Girls’s WorldTeam.
The workforce originated in 2004 out of a neighborhood bike store in Palo Alto and has been the house workforce for riders like Brooke Miller, Megan Guarnier, Skylar Schneider, Lauren Stephens, Kendall Ryan, Lex Albrecht and Alison Jackson, simply to call just a few.
Jackson’s mission because the workforce started 19 years in the past was to present alternatives for girls to compete in world-class biking and of their pursuit of racing on the Olympic Video games. Her aim has been to steadily enhance the workforce with out dropping concentrate on its developmental roots.
The workforce grew step by step every year, ultimately rising to the WorldTour in 2022, the best degree of the game. Over practically 20 years of racing, the workforce achieved many important podiums, together with virtually 70 nationwide championship medals and 20 medals at main occasions throughout Worlds, Olympics, Commonwealth Video games.
This yr, the workforce has had distinctive success and took its biggest-ever win with Alison Jackson at Paris-Roubaix Femmes.
Assertion from Linda Jackson, founder and CEO of To the Prime Biking LLC:
I’m very happy with what we achieved over virtually 20 years with TIBCO Software program and Silicon Valley Financial institution. We undoubtedly began from scratch with grassroots help, native riders and a finances of beneath $30,000. After I first began with the PAB ladies’s workforce, we weren’t even within the nationwide circuit. In 2005 we had been ranked because the sixtieth workforce in North America. In 2006, we gained our first nationwide degree race with Brooke Miller on the Nature Valley Grand Prix and moved as much as the twenty fourth ranked workforce in North America. By 2009 we had gained a number of nationals championships and had risen to the #1 workforce in North America.
We expanded our worldwide racing in 2010 and started producing significant outcomes instantly. In 2018 we had our first World Cup win with Kendall Ryan successful a stage of Amgen’s Tour of California. In 2021 we gained our first World Tour stage with Kristen Faulkner on the Tour of Norway, and this yr we gained our first Monument, with Alison Jackson at Paris-Roubaix.
Our aggressive benefit was within the early identification and growth of gifted feminine highway cyclists. We centered on North American athletes the place attainable and offered them with a growth pathway from the North American circuit to the more difficult European circuit. We had been a launching pad for quite a few elite degree athletes through the years together with Alexis Ryan, Brodie Chapman, Brooke Miller, Chantal Blaak, Kendall Ryan, Krista-Doebel Hickok, Jasmin Glaesser, Kristen Faulkner, Lauren Stephens, Megan Guarnier, Samantha Schneider, Sarah Gigante, Skylar Schneider, Veronica Ewers and most just lately Zoe Backstedt. Different notable riders that spent a considerable a part of their racing careers with us embrace Jo Kiesanowski (eight years) and Meredith Miller (5 years). Rachel Heal (Hedderman) rode for us in 2008 and went on to be our Sports activities Director from 2019 by 2021 and our Basic Supervisor for the previous two years. Patricia Schwager raced for us from 2014-2015 and has been working for our workforce since she retired in 2015. Each Rachel and Paddy, and the remainder of our administration and workers, had been important contributors to our workforce’s success.
Our sport has grown tremendously over the previous 20 years, particularly up to now a number of years. Girls can no longer simply race their bikes out of ardour however achieve this whereas incomes substantial earnings befitting of elite, skilled degree athletes. On account of the cash now coming into ladies’s biking, over the following 5 years we should always see a lot wanted development within the quantity and caliber of ladies getting into the game. The UCI deserves substantial credit score for propelling ladies’s biking ahead. We now have the media consideration that we fought so arduous for these previous few years. It was actually thrilling to observe the rising Continental groups on this most up-to-date Tour de France avec Zwift, and the World Championship highway race was an exhilarating battle of feminine biking legends.
I thank TIBCO and SVB from the underside of my coronary heart for every part they did for our workforce and our sport. They had been early adopters of supporting ladies in sport and their help of our workforce mirrored their help of ladies within the office. I’m additionally very happy with the function we performed within the growth of our sport. In whole, we helped over 100 elite degree ladies pursue their objectives of changing into high worldwide opponents. The abilities they discovered whereas racing will assist them in each side of life.
It took a village to develop this workforce, and I thank all that had been concerned from the start and supported the workforce’s development alongside the way in which. The workforce has been my life for 20 years. I’ll deeply miss being immersed within the development of ladies’s biking, however I look ahead to watching the game evolve and hope that over the following 18-24 months, as our financial system improves, I can discover companions that may permit us to recreate our profitable historical past.
So far as what’s subsequent for me, I’ve been requested many occasions if I’m going to retire. I learn a current article on Phil Liggett turning 80, and folks asking him when he was going to retire. He’s obtained just a few years on me within the sport, however I liked his response, and I really feel the identical manner: “…what do I retire from, that is my life.”