Monavie-Cannondale keeps busy – VeloNews

The Utah-based Monavie-Cannondale professional mountain bike team is prepping for a busy July racing schedule chock-full of single- and multi-day cross-country races. Topping the list is USA Cycling’s marathon national championships [...]]]> Nice to see the Beagle, Slohran and the boys (and girl) getting some press … keep doing Utah proud!

Monavie-Cannondale keeps busy – VeloNews

The Utah-based Monavie-Cannondale professional mountain bike team is prepping for a busy July racing schedule chock-full of single- and multi-day cross-country races. Topping the list is USA Cycling’s marathon national championships on July 4, the June 28-July 4 BC Bike Race and Colorado’s July 5-10 Breck Epic.

“This is busy season for us,” said team manager Matt Ohran. “Epic racing around the world is our team’s tagline, and we have to live up to that.”

Leading the charge for the squad is current short track and marathon national champion Jeremiah Bishop. Bishop has his eyes on defending his title at Colorado’s Firecracker 50 cross-country race on July 4, which serves as the national marathon championships. The Virginian has been living at altitude in Colorado and Utah in preparation for the event.

“(The Firecracker 50) is definitely a huge goal of mine this year, but it’s going to be tough. The field is a lot stronger,” said Bishop. Bishop will face off against traditional marathon riders such as Dave Wiens, Evan Plews and Jay Henry at the Firecracker. But the addition of cross-county strongmen Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski (Subaru-Gary Fisher) and Todd Wells (Specialized) should lift the depth of competition to a new high.

Joining Bishop at the Firecracker 50 is Utah rider Burke Swindlehurst, a longtime veteran of the American road racing scene who races on the Bissell pro cycling team. Swindlehurst will ride also ride for Monavie-Cannondale in the Breck Epic stage race.

Bishop will also race the Breck Epic, but said he just hopes to survive the six-day stage race after racing the Firecracker 50. He will then defend his short-track title at the July 16-19 USA Cycling national championships in Sol Vista, Colorado, and will race in the inaugural Intermontane Challenge stage race, held July 27-31 in Kamloops, British Columbia.

Monavie-Cannondale is sending four two-person teams to next week’s BC Bike Race, which begins this Sunday. Bart Gillespie, who last year won the opening BCBR stage alongside Jason Sager, is teamed up with Utah rider Alex Grant. German rider Ben Sonntag, who is the two-time collegiate cross-country champion, will ride alongside Fort Lewis College team coach Matt Shriver. Sue Butler and Coloradan Bryan Alders will contest the mixed team category, and Ohran and Tim Butler will also race as a team.

Jeremiah Bishop, the reigning marathon and short-track cross-country national champion, is suiting up in the green and purple kit of Monavie-Cannondale.com for the 2009 season. Bishop, 32, found a home with the Utah-based team after spending four seasons [...]]]>

VeloNews | National marathon and short track champ Jeremiah Bishop finds a home on the Monavie-Cannondale team.

Jeremiah Bishop, the reigning marathon and short-track cross-country national champion, is suiting up in the green and purple kit of Monavie-Cannondale.com for the 2009 season. Bishop, 32, found a home with the Utah-based team after spending four seasons as the marquis World Cup rider on the now-defunct Trek-Volkswagen program.

“I feel honored to have this kind of support — it puts a lot of wind back in my sails,” said Bishop, who admitted several plans fell through once the Trek-Volkswagen team ended. “It was one of the more trying moments in my life. We had a baby coming when the team dissolved and I was pretty stressed.”

Bishop and his wife, Erin, welcomed their first child, Conrad, in February.

Bishop isn’t the only newcomer joining Monavie-Cannondale, which fronts the tagline “Epic Racing around the World.” The team is the only American-based pro mountain bike racing team to hold the world’s multi-day endurance stage races, or “Epic” races, as its primary objectives.

German rider Ben Sonntag also joins the roster that includes development riders Alex Grant, Mitchell Peterson and Brian Alders, cyclocross rider Sue Butler, managers/riders Bart Gillespie and Matt Ohran, and mountain biking legend Tinker Juarez. Sonntag is a two-time world champion in winter triathlon, and owns two collegiate mountain bike championships for Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado.

Another newcomer is Bissell road pro Burke Swindlehurst, who will compete in select off-road events for the Monavie-Cannondale squad.

“We saw Bishop as a prime candidate to help us win epic races, and Ben is a talent who Jeremiah can work with and mentor,” said Ohran. “We started the team two years ago as a fun project, and each year we’ve been able to build on it. This really takes us to the next level.”

Monavie-Cannondale is sponsored by a Salt Lake City-based Açai berry antioxidant drink.

Sonntag and Juarez are both racing in next week’s Absa Cape Epic in South Africa. The team will also participate in North American stage races, such as the BC Bike Race, Breck Epic, Intermontane Challenge and American Mountain Classic, which Bishop won in 2008. The squad will also hit select stops of the USA Cycling Pro cross-country tour, including the Fontana National, Sea Otter Classic and Carmichael Training Systems Sand Creek International.

Bishop will also lead the team at November’s La Ruta de los Conquistadores in Costa Rica. Bishop last raced that event in 2006, when he crashed out on the second stage and badly fractured his jaw.

“I couldn’t be happier with my schedule,” Bishop said. “Endurance racing isn’t the retiree sport that it used to be. The international competition is very intense.”

Of course, I’m a little bummed that I heard about this first by reading VeloNews, rather than from Ohran or T-Bird, but I can understand why they wouldn’t want news to get out before it’s official. Such is life.

The list of riders who have suited up for the Trek-Volkswagen professional mountain bike team over the years reads like a who’s who of North American off-road racing: Travis Brown, Alison Sydor, Roland Green, Susan Haywood [...]]]>

VeloNews | Trek-Volkswagen calls it quits | The Journal of Competitive Cycling.
By Fred Dreier
Posted Jan. 3, 2009

The list of riders who have suited up for the Trek-Volkswagen professional mountain bike team over the years reads like a who’s who of North American off-road racing: Travis Brown, Alison Sydor, Roland Green, Susan Haywood and Jeremiah Bishop, just to name a few. But after 13 years, the Trek-Volkswagen program is calling it quits.

The news comes after Volkswagen declined to renew its contract with the Wisconsin-based bicycle manufacturer.

“The program was heavily contingent on Volkswagen’s buy in,” said Michael Browne, Trek’s brand manager for mountain biking. “The relationship will officially end at the end of the 2008 calendar year.”

Shouldn’t press releases and news articles announcing that something WILL end in the future be made public prior to the actual event that is being announced?

Could I have come up with a more complicated construction for that sentence?

More importantly, however, it is nice to know that Trek values their European-based teams more than their domestic teams, putting several American riders out of work whilst throwing a lot of money at Europeans, Kiwis and Springboks.

“Who would have ever guessed that Trek would pull out of domestic racing?” Haywood said. “I was with the team for 10 years, and it was such a good program built around some really good racers. To see Trek pull the plug with such little fanfare is frustrating. I think it deserves a better goodbye.”

But continuing with a domestic program, Browne said, simply does not fit into Trek’s budget for next year.

If Trek had any integrity, it would fund the team for this season on its own, allowing the riders that have helped make the team and the company a success at least one more year of guaranteed salary while the riders look for new sponsorships for the 2010 season, or the team attempts to to pick-up a mid-season sponsor.

But by delaying the announcement of the demise of the team until late December, many of the affected riders are going to have difficulty finding a team which still has room and budget to pay them what they would have been earning had Trek not gambled with their livelihoods.

Henry James once wrote, “What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?”

Thank you, Trek … thank you for showing your true character as a company.