After the team announced the signings of local heros Michael Rogers and Matthew Lloyd a few days ago, Oz Cycling now confirmed a couple of new riders for the upcoming season. There may be some more deals within the next days, but it seems that the most important pieces have been added.

"The hill-men"/

Simon Gerrans	74 HI, 76 FIG
Giovanni Visconti	76 HI, 77 FIG, 75 OVR
Matthew Lloyd	76 HI, 75 FI, 73 MO
Pengda Jiao	76 HI, 72 MO

It might not be the top-quality squad in terms of hilly classics/stages, but it's definitely better than what Oz Cycling had last year. Visconti and Lloyd will challenge for some good results, while Gerrans (who had a very good season with Jayco-RB in 2012) may be a force in breakaways or otherwise a good support for Visconti/Lloyd. Jiao provides some decent support as well, plus the management hopes to see him performing well in especially chinese races.

Visconti was one of the main targets of manager TS Moha. The Italian veteran will add quality to the team.

"The (time-)huntsmen"/

Michael Rogers	83 TT, 74 MO, 75 REC
Jean-Christophe Peraud	75 TT, 74 MO, 73 HI
Michael Ford	81 TT
Miles Olman	79 TT
Wen Hao Li	74 TT

There's a lot of timetrial-competition in PCT this season and Oz Cycling is one of the reasons for that. While Rogers and Peraud won't go only for timetrial-success, as they may be able to finish a stage-race within Top-10 or more.. Aussies Michael Ford and Miles Olman will race as much TT's as possible, while Wen Hao Li will be a decent domestique in near future on different terrains.

36 years old Peraud still has some skills. The French and Oz's superstar Rogers will be the team's only hope when it comes to stage-races.

"The wanna-be-sprinters"/

Alex Rasmussen	77 SPR, 79 ACC, 73 TT, 80 REC
Damion Drapac	78 SPR, 77 ACC*
Tom Scully	74 SPR, 76 ACC (talent)

*back from loan

The team's goal to sign a top-sprinter has clearly been missed, but at least Oz Cycling managed to add Alex Rasmussen for a low wage. He won't compete with the best sprinters, but he can finish well on tough (flat) stages and also timetrial relatively good, which will be good in flat stage-races with a timetrial.. Drapac, coming back from a PT-loan (Festina), may be seen in some C2-races, while his other role will be to support Rasmussen in sprints.

Oz Cycling Project finished it's transfer season and the roster is ready to hit the road. One of the latest additions is Roman Kilun (32), who was acquired via transfer from Simply Red Bull (former Jayco-RB). The climber will join a mediocre mountain-squad, but the management feels confident though: "We may not climb well, but we do climb better than in 2012. Rogers, Peraud, Kilun, Kin-San Wu and "2nd-year-Oz" Shaun Lewis will survive some climbs". Kilun had a stage-win in Tour de Langkawi last year and will add more experience to an already rather "old" squad this year. Anyway, the latest signings consist some talents, too:

Roman Kilun	74 MO, 76 RES
Kin-San Wu	73 MO, 75 RES, 73 FI
Sonomtseren Delgerbayar	80 FI (Lvl 1)
Libin Chen	74 SPR, 74 ACC (Lvl 3, Pot 6)
Ethan Kimmince	71 FI (Lvl 1, Stagiare)

The team also announced, that the designated superstars Jack Bobridge, Luke Durbridge and George Bennett will leave Oz Cycling as loanees for one year. All three will spent this season with Simply Red Bull in it's PT-debut: "We're glad to see all three of them together in one team. They will come back stronger and we know that SRB will provide them a good year and great experiences!"

And there's also some more news on Oz Cycling's new star Michael Rogers. The current TT-world champion needed a TT-shirt to be done, and thanks to the manager's good relationship to designer laidbackmarc, a shirt has been revealed as soon as possible:

The Oz Cycling Project has revealed it's racing schedule for the soon-to-begin season. It's been some though decisions to subscribe for the right races, as season planning is one important key in the PCT. Here's a short overview of what decisions had been made.

Asia/ Oz's mort important goal is to stay in PCT and avoid relegation, but it's also very important to score points in the Asia rankings. Therefore the management decided to participate at as many races in Asia as possible, obviously. Of course we will try to show our colors in Australia, which made us taking part at a couple of C2-races as well.

HC-races/ These are the races where to score the key-points, but that doesn't mean that Oz Cycling will take part at all of their possible HC-races this year. The management decided to skip a few HC-races, where OZC wasn't meant to score too many points anyway. A risky move, but we hope it plays out well.

ProTour/ Last year, Oz Cycling rode two stage-races in PT (Qatar, FBD Eire), with eventually winning the FBD Eire Tour with William Ford. This season, Oz will take part at the Chrono des Herbiers only, while the goal will be to repeat a PT-victory with our new captain Michael Rogers.

Date	Class	Country	Race
January
12/01	HC Asia		Down Under Classic
14/01-19/01	C1 Asia		Tour Down Under
February
01/02	C1 Asia		Tour of South China Sea
05/02	ProTour		Chrono des Herbiers
12/02	C2 Asia		The Emerald Race
28/02	C1 Asia		Gisborne GP
March
03/03-12/03	C1 Asia		Tour de Langkawi
10/03-16/03	C1 Europe		Olympia's Tour
18/03	C2 Africa		Windhoek ITT
25/03-31/03	C1 Asia		Tour of Taiwan
April
05/04-11/04	HC America		Tour of Vancouver
15/04	HC America		Philadelphia International
18/04	C1 Europe		Duo Differdange
24/04-29/04	C1 Asia		Tour of Japan
May
08/05	C1 Europe		GP of Moscow
10/05-15/05	C1 Europe		Tour de l'Ain
15/05-23/05	C2 Asia		Tour of Southland
17/05-21/05	HC Europe		Tour of the Czech Republic
27/05	HC Europe		Berlin ProRace
27/05	C1 Europe		Tallinn-Tartu Grand Prix
29/05-31/05	C1 America		Clasica a Quetzaltenango
June
10/06-13/06	HC Europe		Eneco Tour
15/06	C2 Asia		GP Tokyo
25/06-28/06	C1 Europe		Tour de Slovenie
30/06	C1 America		Monterrey TTT
July
05/07	C1 Europe		Isle of Man ITT
14/07-20/07	HC America		USA Pro Cycling Challenge
18/07-23/07	C1 Europe		Post Danmark Rundt
29/07	C1 Asia		Taldykorgan GP
29/07	C1 Asia		Ulaanbaatar GP
August
10/08-15/08	C2 Asia		Geelong Tour
12/08-18/08	HC Europe		Tour of Hellas
23/08-27/08	C1 Asia		Tour de Vineyards
September
02/09-22/09	C1 America		Tour of America
October
07/10-12/10	C1 Asia		Herald Sun Tour
15/10-20/10	C2 America		Tour of Utah
16/10-20/10	HC Asia		Tour of Beijing
23/10	HC Asia		Japan Cup

The pre-season event in Australia featured professionals from all divisions, with ProTour-riders like Leigh Howard or William Walker, superstar-to-be Lachlan Morton or Oz-loanee George Bennett (wearing New Zealand's colors). But the true star of the Bay Classics was Chris Sutton. The Aussie, riding in CT for Risa-Ergon after leaving Simply Red Bull, grabbed 3 wins, dominating the sprints in style.

Oz Cycling's best in GC was Damion Drapac as 8th (11 points), while Simon Gerrans had the best single-race result as 4th in Portartlington's hilly circuit (7 points in total). Anyway, the whole team enjoyed this event and is was great to meet so many Aussies (and others) from all around the world and divisions!

Gerrans made his move in Portarlington, a bit too late to fight for the win..

Sutton appeared to be the strongest sprinter, winning 3 of 4 races. A great start into the season for the Australian.

Bad news for Oz Cycling, just as the season kicked off: the team already failed two sponsor goals. A disappointing Down Under Classic saw none of our sprinters (Rasmussen, Drapac, Cooke) in good position to compete in the mass-sprint, while William Ford at least managed to finish as 16th, grabbing some points for OZC.

And our team continued to not show the needed attitude in our second home-race Tour Down Under: a low-key performance in opening stage was followed by a first aggressive race by Giovanni Visconti (see picture above) and a first Top-10 appearance for OZC.

While the lack of breakaway-participations appeared to be Oz Cycling's "trademark" during the whole tour (except of William Ford in 5th stage), Matthew Lloyd finally proved to be competitive by finishing 4th on Willunga Hill.

Anyway, there's not only bad news: a decent overall performance by Simon Gerrans (10th), Lloyd (15th) and Visconti (13th), plus a nice 6th place in final stage for Alex Rasmussen prevented our home-race to become a pointless effort, even though our fans may have expected more.

Tour Down Under Final GC/

1	Alex Dowsett	Jaguar - Eritel	18h50'29
2	Aleksandr Efimkin	Cisco Cycling Team	s.t.
3	Francesco Gavazzi	Team UPC - Boehringer	+ 12
4	Rui Costa	Team CSC-Orbea	+ 16
5	Romain Zingle	Team BPost	+ 28
...
10	Simon Gerrans	Oz Cycling Project	s.t.
...
13	Giovanni Visconti	Oz Cycling Project	s.t.
...
15	Matthew Lloyd	Oz Cycling Project	s.t.