Linda Jackson confirmed on Friday that her company will not be seeking to renew its WorldTour licence for the next WT cycle. The EF-TIBCO-SVB license is entirely owned by To the Top Cycling LLC and will not be transferred to another team, she said.
“It is with deep regret that I confirm that I have not been able to secure the sponsorship needed to maintain my WorldTour license,” Jackson said in a statement. “Trying to find sponsorship was just too difficult following SVB’s collapse in March given the overall economic environment at the time. I let my riders know early on that they should be looking for other opportunities as my main priority was to be transparent and assist them with transitions to other world tour teams versus dragging out the sponsorship hunt to the 11th hour.”
Two decades of growth
Jackson said that the team began in 2004 from a scrappy group of amateur Silicon Valley riders sponsored by a local bike shop, Palo Alto Bicycles. The team found sponsorship from TIBCO and Silicon Valley Bank, leading to the team growing gradually each year, to eventually rise to the Women’s World Tour.
“I am very proud of what we accomplished over almost two decades with TIBCO Software and Silicon Valley Bank. We definitely started from scratch with grassroots support, local riders and a budget of under $30,000. When I first started with the PAB women’s team, we weren’t even in the national circuit. In 2005 we were ranked as the 60th team in North America,” the Olympian said. “In 2006, we won our first national level race with Brooke Miller at the Nature Valley Grand Prix and moved up to the 24th ranked team in North America. By 2009 we had won several nationals championships and had risen to the No. 1 team in North America. We expanded our international racing in 2010 and began generating meaningful results immediately. In 2018 we had our first World Cup win with Kendall Ryan winning a stage of Amgen’s Tour of California. In 2021 we won our first World Tour stage with Kristen Faulkner at the Tour of Norway, and this year we won our first monument, with Alison Jackson at Paris Roubaix.”
Development was key
The former national champion said that the team’s competitive advantage was in the early identification and development of talented female road cyclists.
“We focused on North American athletes where possible and provided them with a development pathway from the North American circuit to the more challenging European…
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