February 18/14 18:32 pm - Nino Schurter to Race On Road with Orica GreenEDGE

Posted by Editoress on 02/18/14
 

Rumours started floating around before the start of 2014 that world champion and World Cup champion Nino Schurter would add some road racing to his schedule for 2014.  His mountain bike team, Scott-Odlo, has now confirmed that Schurter will race the Tour de Suisse and Tour de Romandie with the WorldTour Orica GreenEDGE team, who also use Scott bikes.  Schurter had to receive approval from both Swiss Cycling and the UCI.

The Tour de Romandie begins right after the Cairns, Australia round of the Mountain Bike World Cup, so he will likely miss Cairns.  The Tour de Suisse takes place in mid-June when there are no World Cups.

"To do the Tour de Suisse once in my life has always been my dream," explained Schurter. "My heart is in mountain biking and will remain there. But if I ever wanted to ride a big stage race on the road, the 2014 season offers the perfect slot for it. To defend my World Championship title is still going to be my main goal for 2014 and furthermore I will 100% concentrate on mountain biking to hopefully add a missing Olympic medal to my collection. I believe that on my way there, I can gain a lot of knowledge and experience from racing on the road with Orica-GreenEdge this year."

Scott Sports, as Nino's main sponsor welcomes this idea and Thomas Frischknecht as his team manager adds that, "Nino has always been looking for new ways to develop his skills. He is searching for improvements all the time - the opposite of a copy-paste athlete. That's him and that's why he is so good at what he is doing. I respect him for these characteristics and therefore support him with this idea. I'm pretty sure this experience will only make him stronger."

Shayne Bannan, General Manager of Orica GreenEDGE adds: "It's a really exciting project getting Nino on the road with us. He's an extremely accomplished athlete and we look forward to seeing how he will perform on a road team on home soil."