Katusha Team will ride on Ridley bikes

Today, Belgian manufacturer Ridley announced it would be ending its four-year relationship with the Silence-Lotto squad and will supply the bicycles for the Russian superteam Katusha next season. They will be riding Ridley‘s Dean and Noah models, with the groupset supplier yet to be confirmed.

Katusha, which is evolving from the Tinkoff set-up, has had a huge injection of funding reported to be in the region of 30 million euros. They have already signed Robbie McEwen and Filippo Pozzato, and are set to clinch Vladimir Karpets. British Cycling Academy rider Ben Swift is also rumoured to be on the Katusha shopping list.

And the rumour is that Cadel Evans and his Silence-Lotto team-mates will be on Museeuw bikes for 2009, although that is yet to be confirmed.

That is only one of the changes in the professional peloton for 2009 as the jostling to supply the biggest teams in the world with bikes continues.

Katusha to sign McEwen and Karpets

Future Russian cycling team Katusha (Катюша), to be created from the Tinkoff formation, on Monday announced the recruitment of experienced Australian Robbie McEwen and Russian Vladimir Karpets (Владимир Карпец). McEwen and Karpets will join up with Italian Filippo Pozzato and Belgian sprinter Gert Steegmans at their new team.
Tinkoff, owned by Russian businessman Oleg Tinkov (Олег Тиньков), said 36-year-old McEwen was joining from Silence Lotto along with the 27-year-old Karpets, who arrives from Caisse d’Epargne. Karpets won the Tour of Switzerland last year. Katusha is the mainstay of a multi-million dollar new Russian Global Cycling Project foundation which enjoys the backing of muscular sponsors including energy giant Gazprom and energy and real estate company Itera. Already snapped up were Alexandre Botcharov (Аоександр Бочаров) from Credit Agricole, Spaniards Antonio Colom (Astana) and Joan Horrach (Caisse d’Epargne), as well as Belgians Kenny de Haes (Topsport) and Stijn Vandenbergh (AG2R).