Despite having other plans in mind, we've secured our biggest transfer of 2016! The PCT field is packed with climbing talent, but not everyone has the history or experience of Riccardo Ricco. In addition to big mountains Ricco is good on short, punchy climbs too which we hope will distinguish him from his opposition!

Word of thanks goes out to SotD for the business - I'm sure we're both happy with what we got out of the deal!

Alongside some big signings, we've made some strong additions to our support structure and we signed our cobbles leader! Shaun-Nick Bester is a solid all round domestique for us, but will be our outright leader on cobbled races! Admittedly, he jokes about actually chasing results in cobbled races and insists his real value lies within his strength as a team mate. Yanjani Sakala was scouted for his power on flats and his love of breakaways - and amazing bike skills!

While we might not have the absolute best climbing leader, we do like to brag about our depth in that department. Vadim Ratiy is our latest addition and despite being lackluster for Movistar-USPS in the Pro Tour, we hope he can get some good results with us. Having Eastman and Ricco already on the team, Ratiy will have minimal pressure to perform and can instead seek to be more aggressive and take some chances.

In somewhat of a late deal, we're happy to have Tom Dumoulin join us! The transfer with Aegon-Lavazza had us say good-bye to George Bennett, but has us greeting Dumoulin and some spare cash .We hope Tom can strengthen our TTT roster for Tour of Vancouver and Tour of South Africa. He will also adopt the role as hairstyle mentor for some of the younger guys.

We pride ourselves on developing riders from our home continent as it is our aim to build a team based around African riders. For the moment we have numerous non-African leaders, but we have some wonderful talents coming through the mix. Here's the breakdown: