It’s time for change so Hatherly to ‘Specialize’

JANUARY is time for change and nowhere is that more obvious than in cycling with riders moving to new teams and forming new alliances as the calendar switches to a new year.

This is the case for SA’s top mountain biker with Alan Hatherly, pictured, taking to Instagram this week to announce that he will be riding for Specialized in 2019.

This is not a huge change and certainly not unexpected. Hatherly has been riding a Specialized bike for years and in November, while riding for the now disbanded Team Spur, he paired up with Simon Andreassen from Denmark, a Team Specialized rider, for the Wines 2 Whales.

Hatherly is not the only rider to have changed teams with his former team-mate, Ariane Lüthi, also without a team after the Team Spur sponsorship ended. The SA-based Swiss rider posted a social media teaser this week saying she was training abroad but had just signed a new contract. As yet the name of her new team is not known.

On the international front, this week’s big news in terms of mountain bikers changing teams was the announcement that Cape Epic women’s winner and current cross country world champion Kate Courtney will be leaving Team Specialized and joining Scott Sram.

The most notably implication for South Africans is that Courtney will almost certainly not be partnering Annika Langvad at the 2019 Absa Cape Epic. Although the Epic has been able to put in place slightly different rules for the top women riders and female riders can combine across trade teams, it is extremely unlikely a Team Specialized rider will team up with a Scott-mounted rider.

Hopefully that means two strong teams will emerge from the Langvad/ Courtney combination which was so dominant in the 2018 Cape Epic.

Scott Sram will be particularly happy with the news of their new signing. It means that they have both the current cross country world champions in their team. Nino Schurter is a long-time Scott Sram team member and with the increase in interest in women’s cycling it is a smart marketing move to get Courtney on board as well. The young American shot to prominence in 2018 with the Epic win and her surprise World Championship victory makes her a marketer’s dream, while Schurter is well positioned to continue to dominate men’s cycling.

Former marathon world champion, Austrian powerhouse Alban Lakata also announced this week that he had moved to the Bulls team and this is also a move that will have local cycling enthusiasts excited. One of the big objectives in his move is to ride with five-time Cape Epic winner and long-time Bulls rider Karl Platt to form a potent combination. Lakata has twice finished second at the Epic – including 2018 – and has also been third, fourth, fifth and sixth.

Platt jointly holds the record for the most Epic wins with Christoph Sauser and with Lakata, Platt has the opportunity to claim the record by himself – and give the strong Austrian his first Epic title. However, early indications are that Platt may just find himself riding as a support rider.

The second Team Bulls pairing is that of powerful former winner Urs Huber of Switzerland – he won with Platt in 2016 – who will be teaming up with the talented Simon Stiebjahn, who has finished third in the Epic. This combination has the power and skill to win the race and it would not be too much of a surprise if they did not end up as the top Bulls finishers.