Top level professional cycling teams may have every incentive to jealously guard their best talent so they can keep yielding the wins, points and prestige that help keep their ranking high and sponsors happy but, conversely, there are also an array of squads where the biggest victory is to see their finest riders walk away. Development squad ARA Pro racing Sunshine Coast is one such team and in the 2022 season alone three of its racers have leapt from the domestic scene in Australia to secure a chance to race professionally in Europe.
It’s an admirable tally, particularly given that generally only a handful of riders from the nation break through to the top ranks each year, but three was still not enough for the University of Sunshine Coast based team to rest on its laurels – not when there will still talented riders without a 2023 contract. This month’s Tour de Langkawi became an all out effort to try and find more opportunities for those who had been so short of them in pivotal development years after the COVID-19 pandemic shut Australia’s borders and brought much of the top-level racing in the region to a halt.
With six WorldTour teams lining up at the eight-day Malaysian tour and also a number of UCI ProTeam, such as Alpecin Deceuninck and Uno X Pro Cycling, the competition at the Tour de Langkawi had climbed to a level not seen before, but as the competition intensified so did the brightness of the spotlight. The riders from the lone Australian squad at the race this year had a chance to show they could compete with some of the world’s very best and to do it in front of the sports directors from some of the top teams in the world.
That international exposure is something Cameron Scott – who back in Australia leads the National Road Series – knows from experience can be absolutely essential in taking the next step in a cycling career. The 24-year-old has secured a contract with Bahrain Victorious for 2023 and 2024, and it wasn’t his years of consistent winning efforts back at home that initially drew their attention.
“The team went to Europe earlier in the year in May and our second race there I got on the podium. That really started the conversation,” the 24 year old who switched his focus from track to the road in 2020 told Cyclingnews before the final stage on the island of Langkawi.
“It seems like no matter what I did in Australia it wasn’t enough. As soon as I got over there, one result, I didn’t even have to win, was good…
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