Fairly joins trio of Americans on Giant-Alpecin

Caleb Fairly will ride for Giant-Alpecin next season, joining three other Americans on the WorldTour team.

Giant already has Americans Lawson Craddock, Chad Haga, and Carter Jones in its 2015 lineup. Craddock and Haga both joined Giant for 2014, while Jones arrives from Continental outfit Optum-Kelly Benefit Strategies.

Fairly, 27, rode for Garmin-Sharp the last two years. In 2014, he primarily rode short stage races, like the Amgen Tour of California, Tour of Poland, Tour of Alberta, and the USA Pro Challenge. Fairly is a strong climber who will continue to serve as a domestique.

“Caleb is a rider we have identified who can work well in our team and with the structured way we work,” coach Marc Reef said in a Giant-Shimano press release. “You have to look at the way a rider will fit into the structure, and we see Caleb as a good support rider for the hilly classics and in stage races, something that is becoming increasingly important for us now.”

Fairly, who began his professional career with HTC-Highroad in 2011, said, “I’m really excited to be riding with Team Giant-Alpecin and am grateful for their confidence in me. Since the team began I have been impressed with how they work to develop riders, and for the first time in my career I had more than one option so it gave me the opportunity to look at what I value in a team. [General manager] Iwan [Spekenbrink] has developed a well-structured and organized team, and these are very important qualities to me, so I couldn’t be more positive about the opportunity.”

Fairly placed sixth in the road race at the 2013 Volkswagen USA Cycling national championships.

Fredrik Ludvigsson, 20, will join Fairly on the 2015 team. The Swede rode on the squad’s development team this year, and he raced at the UCI WorldTour level late in 2014. Ludvigsson finished fifth overall at Le Triptyque des Monts et Châteaux, seventh at Liège-Bastogne-Liège U23, and was the best young rider at the Circuit des Ardennes.

He will officially join the team starting next year alongside older brother Tobias.

“I’m really looking forward to riding with and learning from the team, with some of the best riders in the world,” the younger Ludvigsson said in the release. “To ride with my brother will also be very nice and I look forward to racing alongside him and all the others in 2015.”

Giant also re-signed Cheng Ji for the next two seasons after he became the first Chinese rider to compete in the Tour de France this year. Cheng has ridden for Giant since 2007, when the team was called Skil-Shimano.

In 2014, the team was known as Giant-Shimano, and registered in the Netherlands. For 2015, it picked up a new sponsor and registered as a German team instead, though it will keep its Dutch headquarters. With this change, it will become the first German-registered WorldTour team since 2010.