Janneke Kanis will ride with Skil-1t4i in 2012

Janneke Kanis, formerly a team-mate of Marianne Vos at Nederland Bloeit, has announced that she will ride with the new Skil-1t4i outfit in the 2012 season.

Janneke, who came 7th in the Omloop het Nieuwsblad this year and is a previous winner of the Dutch Student Games, explained on her website:

"I would like to announce that I will be riding with the new Skil-1t41 team for 2012! After three years with Nederland Bloeit, I look forward to a new environment offering new opportunities. The new team's vision and approach is very appealing to me, and I am feeling confident - this makes me happy and I'm looking forward to my first races with them. Here is the press release as published on http://1t4i.com/nieuws:

"Project 1t4i will be introducing a Women's Team and running it alongside the existing men's team in 2012, a UCI team operating as an integral part of Project 1t4i. The team will be based around Regina Bruins, Amy Pieters, Esra Tromp, Suzanne de Goede, Anne de Wildt and Linda van Rijen. Supporting them, and strengthening the team further, will be Adrie Visser (ex-HTC-Highroad) who has won five UCI events, Monique van de Ree (ex-AA-Drink) and Janneke Kanis (ex-Nederland Bloeit). Kelly Markus has also earned a contract after a strong second half to the previous season and a 9th placing in the Junior Women event at this year's World Championships in Copenhagen.

The Women's Team will be run with the same vision and share the same philosophy as the men's team. Our sponsor Skil, who last year began a two-year sponsorship deal with the Olympic Women's Team, have entered into a one year contract providing sponsorship for the new team which, as a result, will be named Skil-1t4i and which will become operative in the Spring. For 2013, a new sponsor will be found and the team will adopt a new name accordingly. The leader of the new Women's Team has been named as Sharon van Essen."

In these times when many world class female cyclists are paid less than their male counterparts - or, in some cases - not at all, television companies ignore the sport entirely causing potential sponsors to back away and commentators at the World Championships feel it's acceptable to spend the entirety of the Elite Women's Road Race complaining they're bored and generally acting like schoolboys, it's fantastic to see a strong new team being assembled (especially when the announcement is worded in such a way as to suggest the team will be around for the foreseeable future rather than merely constituting an experiment) and a sponsor already connected to the sport willing to extend their support. We wish Janneke and Skil-1t4i a successful 2012.

Cav to Quick-Step Quashed

World Road Champion Mark Cavendish will not be riding with the newly-merged Omega Pharma-Lotto/Quick-Step team in the new season, says Quick-Step co-owner Bessel Kok.

The Dutch businessman, who shares ownership of four fifths of the team with Zdenek Bakala, said that while "there have been discussions about his future... both parties mutually agreed not to sign the contract." The cycling rumour mill went into overdrive last week when Sky - the overall favourite as Cav's destination for next year - confirmed that at present they have only an oral contract with the rider and nothing is signed. Cav is known to favour Specialized bikes, whereas Sky have a contract with Pinarello, and is personally sponsored by Nike - which would almost certainly end were he to go to Sky as the team is sponsored by competitor Adidas - leading many to speculate that Quick-Step's decision to ride Specializeds in 2012 was taken in order to accommodate the Manx superstar.

A quote from Omega Pharma manager Patrick Lefevere, in which a recounted comment made by Bernhard Eisel seems to confirm that Cav will go to Sky, suggests that efforts are taking place to iron out the reported difficulties and formulate a satisfactory deal between the rider and the British team.

Cummings to BMC

Bad news for Sky but a sign of progress for cycling

Cummings in 2010 (© Michiel Jelijs CC2.0)

Sky are assembling a strong team for 2012, but they'll keenly feel the departure of Steve Cummings who ill be leaving to ride alongside Thor Hushovd at BMC for the new season. Wirral-born Cummins, 30, has been with the British-based team since the start of 2010 when he joined following the demise of the British-based, South African-sponsored Barloworld.

Steve, who also rode with Johan Bruyneel's Discovery Channel squad in their last incarnation before the team broke up due to sponsorship difficulties, made his mark on cycling aged 17 when he became the first - and to date, the only - junior to ever win the Eddie Soens Memorial Road Race. Primarily known as a time trial specialist, he has also become a formidable climber - even beating the great Alberto Contador to a mountaintop stage finish in this year's Eddie Soens Memorial Road Race, an achievement that put him in the General Classification lead right up until the final stage when Tony Martin took over and won the event. Later in the year, having won second place in the Tour of Britain, he was part of the Team GB that helped project Mark Cavendish across the line to become the first British World Champion since the legendary Tom Simpson in 1965.

BMC, sponsored by the Swiss frame builder of the same name, were invited to compete in the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France for 2010 and performed well enough to earn themselves a ProTeam licence in 2011 - when team member Cadel Evans dominated Andy Schleck in the final time trial to win the General Classification.

Building on that success, manager Jim Oshowicz has brought in ex-World Champ Hushovd and puncheur Philippe Gilbert (who this year became one of only two riders to have won all three Ardennes Classics in a single year, the other being Davide Rebellin), in doing so taking advantage of the very high level of performance among the current generation of cyclists, flashing an obviously adequate amount of cash around to create a superteam potentially able to compete with the new merger-born Radioshack Nissan Trek Pro Cycling Team and Omega-Pharma-Quick-Step, the rapidly-strengthening GreenEdge and so on. This, it would seem, is good news for the sport; evidence that despite the tragic end of HTC-Highroad, the worldwide effort to end doping - which led to the first clean Tour in living memory this year - is finally having its desired effect: leaving cycling with a new, healthy image and bringing the big money sponsors flocking back.