Walking through an industrial area a few kilometres from Varese, it looks like a classic industrial warehouse. A one-story building protected by metal fencing. The magic, however, is inside.
The service course is the beating heart of the GreenEDGE Cycling team. It is the start and finish point of every race: from Australia to Europe. When, in a few days’ time, our squad in Perth kicks off the 2025 season, a lot of work will have already been done.
The purple invasion
A cycling team can never stand still and the team’s 14th year begins with two big changes that sees its operation expand like never before. First of all is the signing of the multi-year partnership with Melbourne brand MAAP. The Australian company will dress Team Jayco AlUla, Liv AlUla Jayco and the Liv AlUla Jayco Continental team from 2025.
Making the exciting new look happen has been a big project from the initial meetings, through the design process and, finally, the production of the striking kit.
While waiting to see the new MAAP jerseys in action, here’s how it all happened. Last October, athletes from the team met in Turin for a couple of days for a camp. MAAP measured up the riders for their new kit before heading away to manufacture the copious amounts of kit in time for it to be unveiled to the world. No mean feat.
Just two months later, at in the December training camp in Spain, riders then received 10 jerseys and some of the materials for the first part of 2025. “Usually,” explains Kabir Lenzi, who is the head of the team’s 18 masseurs and is responsible for the distribution of the kit. “The material is distributed directly to the cyclists in two tranches. The first between December and January, the second before the Giro d’Italia and mainly concerns the material for the hot seasons.”
In practice, each athlete is given 18 new jerseys in addition to other clothing to use until the end of the season.
“For the women’s WorldTour, team the material is slightly less since they do fewer races,” adds Lenzi. “In total, between men and women WorldTour, we deliver over 800 jerseys to the athletes.”
As the preparations continue for the forthcoming season, the new team water bottles have arrived at the service course. In total, across all of the teams, there are over 60,000 – the vast majority of which end up in the hands of fans at the end of the day.
Bigger and better
The second piece of news for 2025 is that the GreenEDGE family will grow further with the addition of Hagens Berman Jayco. From this year, it will be the official men’s development team, adding another string to the team’s bow. That means there’s now four teams operating under the GreenEDGE Cycling banner.
The U23 team is well-established and was set up by Axel Merckx in 2009. Since then, it has become considered one of the best in the men’s peloton for developing young stars of the future. Indeed, Team Jayco AlUla rider Eddie Dunbar is one of the riders that honed his craft with them before making the jump to WorldTour.
“Growth and helping to develop the next generation have always been important to GreenEDGE Cycling and Team Owner Gerry Ryan,” highlights General Manager Brent Copeland. “And then we must consider that, in recent times, cycling has changed a lot. We need to go and look for new talents and try to prepare them to become WorldTour professionals.”
To do this, it is not enough to rely only on numbers and results, but we need to know the riders in a more in-depth way.
“We are developing the scouting process to identify those guys who have the potential to join the devo’ team,” says the South African. “We don’t just analyse sports performances we are interested in understanding in depth who we have in front of us.”
Spin the wheel
With so much racing between even just the two WorldTour teams, everything comes on a grand scale. Last year, more than 1,000 tubeless tires were used over the whole season.
“It’s a good number,” says Mattia Romanò, who is responsible for orders and relations with the team’s technical partners. “But we always try to give the best to the athletes. There’s only one rule: WorldTour and devo’ teams have the same materials available to them.”
To do this, the team’s 20 mechanics started assembling the new Giant and Liv bikes in November, a few days after the end of the 2024 season. “To assemble a bike it takes about three hours but then you also have to do the setup according to the athletes’ measurements,” explains Romanò.
Typically, all the bikes are ready by January. But how many are there? To give an example, the men’s WorldTour team has over 200 Giant bikes available between Propel, TCR, and TT models for the road and time trials.
On average, each athlete on the men’s team can count on seven bikes per season. There are some exceptions. One of the team leaders, Australian Ben O’Connor, will have nine bikes at his disposal, including two road bikes and a TT bike that he will keep at home to train on.
“Being efficient is essential and for this reason, at the races, especially in the Grand Tours, we bring four road bikes and two time trial bikes for our leader,” explains Romanò. “The time is so tight after each stage that it is always better to have one or two spare bikes ready to use.”
On the same page
Last year, between the men’s and women’s WorldTour teams, the riders competed in nearly 400 race days across the year. The 2025 season will see the men exceed 280 days of racing, thanks to some new races such as the Copenhagen Sprint in June and the Tour of Hellas in April.
To make sure that the team stays on the road throughout the year, organising the movements of riders, staff and vehicles is a real challenge. Jacopo Scampini is mainly responsible for the movement of vehicles. “At the end, my goal,” he says “is to get the vehicles where they need to go. There are days when, between men and women, we are present in up to four races at the same time.”
Together with colleagues who take care of the staff and riders, a general plan is prepared that is continuously updated. “It is essential to be on the same page because,” Scampini continues, “this is a job where unexpected events are the order of the day. You have to go through customs, the vehicles can break down, planes that don’t fly and so on.”
Moving a fleet made up of, three buses, three trucks, 18 cars, and two kitchen vans, just to name a few, is therefore not an easy thing, especially considering that the team has adopted an eco-friendly policy.
“We try to reduce travel to the bare minimum. For example, the truck and a couple of other vehicles will remain in Spain between the first and second training camps and the same happens for the Northern Classics where the vehicles remain between Belgium and the Netherlands for over a month.”
In this way, not only does the team save on transport costs, but it also contributes to reducing its environmental impact.
