June 4/19 14:50 pm - Toronto Velodrome Club Launches

Posted by Editor on 06/4/19
 

Members of Canada's men's endurance track team have launched a road team, the Toronto Velodrome Club.  With the demise of Team RaceClean, the riders decided to continue a team for themselves in the road season.

Currently, the team consists of the men's track endurance Olympic performance pool of riders - Aidan Caves, Vincent d'Haitre, Michael Foley, Derek Gee, Adam Jamieson and Jay Lamoureux.  If others riders are named to the elite squad, they will have the opportunity to join.

"We decided on Toronto Velodrome Club because of the legacy of the Toronto Pan Am Games and the velodrome," explained Lamoureux.  "We wanted to set up a team that would be for riders, by riders.  It's going to be primarily track riders and have a track specific focus over the next year, going towards Tokyo 2020."

Jamieson and Lamoureux will race in team colours this week at the GP Cycliste de Charlevoix in Quebec this weekend, and the squad will also wear the kits at the National Road Championships at the end of the month.

"Charlevoix will be our first team race; it will just be [Adam Jamieson] and I," says Lamoureux, "because of other things that are happening like T-Town [Trexlertown track] racing.  A lot of the time it will be just part of the team racing because we have so many different events."

"We are just going to be domestic this year," said Jamieson.  "What ended happening last year, at least for me when I was racing with Silber, it was tough sometimes when the track team wanted me to be at a training camp and there was also road racing going on.  There was a little bit of conflict there, although Silber and the track coach dealt with it well.  But, it is was tricky at points, and to remove that extra stress, we decided to just put a team together ourselves."

Jamieson continues:  "We decided we were going to put the team together in June of last year.  It was a new experience for a lot of us.  We tried cold-calling [sponsors], which wasn't super effective, but we found the most support through people that we knew, who knew someone and could put in a good word for us.  It was really nerve wracking to cold call a company, but it gave me a lot of respect for the amount of work you have to put in to run a team.  When I was just racing I never saw that aspect, I just wanted to put my head down and ride."

"We had a budget for kit that we were allowed to use from RaceClean and we just put our own team together.  It was something we wanted to do for fun.  It was kind of exciting to be able to approach sponsors ourselves and work it the way we wanted it to be."

So far, the team has received sponsorship from:

Mapei
Lenovo
Derosa bikes
Louis Garneau
IDrinkCoffee.com
AMD
Logica Bike Shop