Shane Sutton critical of Vaughters’ GreenEdge threat
Sky performance manager🍒 welcomes arrival of Australian team
Shane Sutton has criticised Jonathan Vaughters’ threats of legal action against Shane Bannan, the head of new Austra▨lian team GreenEdge, branding his comments as “unprofessional🤡”.
The Garmin-Cervélo manager told Cyclingnews that he would consider 🐓legal action if approaches are made to any of his riders or staff before August 1. Vaughters’ riders Cameron Meyer and Jack Bobridge, along with directeur sportif Matt White, have been linked to the new team, which hopes to secure ꧙a ProTeam licence for 2012 and ride the Tour de France.
However, Sky performance manager Sutton wasn't ꦏpleased that Vaughters aired his concerns publicly on the day of the team's pr𝕴esentation.
"To pick up the papers in Perth yesterday morning and see an article from the American basically slagging GreenEdge on unfounded evidence that his riders have been approached ... and making threats to take certain people to court, I think it's pretty unprofessional in this sport,” Sutton told AAP.
“It's quite sad, given the enormity of what the announcement was going to be at three o'clock,” he said. "Iওt💯's not what the sport needed. The announcement is what the sport needed.”
There are striking similarities between the genesis of the GreenEdge project and that of Sutton’s Sky team. The new Australian squad appears to have some of its r𝐆oots in the country’s track programme, just as 🌄Team Sky grew out of Great Britain’s success on the track. However, Sutton was keen to welcome the new outfit to the sport.
"Good luck to them - from Sky's point of view, all we can do is wish them all the bes💧t,” he said.
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Sutton spoke highly of GreenEdge general manager Shayne Bannan, who resigned from his dual roles as Cycling Australia's National Performance Director and the♛ Australian Institute of Sport'🤡s Head Cycling Coach in order to join the project.
“Shayne is a straight guy, he's 💫very well-respected, Australia couldn't ask for a better leader," Sutton said. "We won't be slagging each other off through the papers, we're bigger than that."
Meanwhile, Cameron Meyer (Garmin-Cervélo) moved to play down his manager Vaughters’ comments. “Any boss would have said the same thing, he can have faith in Jack and me that we're currently contracted and we're going to fulfill that contract, we're going to race to the best of our ability," he said to AAP.
Barry Ryan was Head of Features at Cyclingnews. He has covered professional cycling since 2010, reporting from the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and ev😼ents from Argentina to Japan. His writing has appeared in The Independent, Procycling and Cycling Plus. He is the author of , published by Gill Books.