“Just as women’s cycling finally made it, my team failed”: Longstanding Paris-Roubaix winning women’s team set to fold at end of 2023 after losing key sponsors

A positive drugs test on the world’s strongest team, a two-year ban for cyclocross star Toon Aerts, an excruciatingly long-running doping saga finally reaches a conclusion (somewhat), and, now, a major race-winning squad is set to close its doors due to sponsorship troubles – It’s been quite the week for nostalgia merchants of cycling’s not-so-distant past.

While the former three stories underline the strikingly clear fact that the sport hasn’t quite moved on from its shadowy past, despite all the PR spin, the news this weekend that EF Education-TIBCO-SVB will not carry on beyond the end of this season is a sad reminder that even those who have helped push cycling to new frontiers can fall foul of its inherently cruel capitalist structure.

The US-based women’s team, founded by former Canadian pro Linda Jackson in 2007 as a small domestic seven-rider outfit, has faced months of uncertainty following the loss of long-term sponsors TIBCO and Silicon Valley Bank in the wake of much-documented financial crises.

(Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com)

And despite winning Paris-Roubaix in April courtesy of a courageously bold performance by fellow Canadian Alison Jackson, Jackson’s search for a new sponsor was also hindered by EF Education’s announcement in June that it was going to launch its own women’s team for 2024, which will operate under the same umbrella as the Jonathan Vaughters-led men’s WorldTour outfit.

(Despite racing in the same distinctive pink kit and with almost the same name, Jackson and Vaughters’ teams have, rather surprisingly, remained two separate entities, with their only formal link being a shared title sponsor.)

In any case, the creation of the new EF Education-Cannondale women’s team proved a further blow to the already sponsored-depleted squad, leading Jackson to concede last night that her 17-year-plus project – the longest continuously-running women’s team in cycling – had finally reached its end.

“It was really hard to come to terms with the fact that I was not going to be able to rescue my World Tour team and continue on for the next World Tour cycle,” Jackson wrote on Facebook last night.

“All of that hard work, all of the blood, sweat, and tears that went into building a team from scratch. Women’s cycling had FINALLY made it, and just as we made it, my team failed.”

(Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com)

She continued: “But I leave the World Tour very proud, and very grateful. Proud of what we built from the local group of Palo Alto Bicycles riders we were in 2003/2004 to winning Paris Roubaix this year.  Proud of the difference our team made in the lives of so many young women, a difference that will benefit them for their lifetimes. 

“Proud of how our team hung on through the 2008 recession, TIBCO being sold in 2015, Covid, and many, many more sponsorship challenges that we had to overcome during a span of almost 20 years.  And very proud to have played a part in the development of women’s cycling. What the sport was 20 years ago when I first started this programme, compared to what it is now, is simply remarkable.”

The closure of EF Education-TIBCO-SVB – and the news that its WorldTour licence will not be acquired by either the new EF team or any other existing outfit – means that a number of big-name riders, such as Paris-Roubaix winner Jackson, Lauren Stephens, Georgia Williams, and rising British star Zoe Bäckstedt, will be scrambling to find a team for 2024.

According to Belgian newspaper Sporza, Christel Herremans, EF Education-TIBCO-SVB’s European manager, has claimed that the team’s riders and staff have been contractually prohibited from being contacted by the Vaughters-led men’s team, a claim Jackson denies.

(A.S.O./Thomas Maheux)

American climber Veronica Ewers (above), who has secured top ten GC placings at the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia during the last two seasons, was the only rider contracted to Jackson’s team for 2024, and is also the only member of that team to be confirmed as part of the new EF Education-Cannondale Continental team.

She will be joined by 2017 Tour of Flanders winner Coryn Labecki, Nina Kessler, Noemi Rüegg, and Irish rider Megan Armitage in the new team. It is currently unclear how many of the riders and staff currently involved in the EF Education-TIBCO-SVB setup will also make the move alongside Ewers.