Froome's team search, Team Manuela Fundación no more: Daily News Digest

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Hello again, CyclingTips readers.

Bike racing news is flying in thick and fast this week, don’t blink or you’ll miss it. So let’s catch you up real quick. We’ve got Froome rumors, Manuela mishaps, and Everesting enigmas.

The biggest news this morning comes from Gerry Ryan, the principal and bank account behind Mitchelton-Scott, who decided to cut ties with Manuela Fundación less than a week after the team announced the non-profit as its new sponsor. Rumblings to that effect began yesterday, and the decision was confirmed via a press release early this morning.

There’s some controversy in the Everesting world, too. Looks like Lachlan Morton will have to give it another shot.

Read on for more …

Caley Fretz
Editor-in-Chief

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What’s news

| Froome is still looking for a new team

The Froomors (Froome rumors, get it? Shoutout to the Cycling Podcast’s Richard Moore for that one.) continue. This time it’s Italian site TuttoBiciWeb suggesting that Chris Froome could be heading to Israel Start-Up Nation as part of a three-year deal beginning on August 1st.

ISN has been tied to signing Greg Van Avermaet and Jasper Stuyven as well.

| Mitchelton-Scott will not become Manuela Fundación

Wish we could say we didn’t see this coming … but we saw this one coming. In fact, our sources suggested yesterday that this announcement was imminent: Gerry Ryan has pulled the plug on the Manuela Fundación deal.

There are, we hear, two other potential sponsorship deals in the works. In the meantime, Ryan will bring the team’s salaries back up to normal levels, rather than the 30 percent they’ve been on since February. So that’s excellent news, at least.

| Lachlan Morton’s Everesting wasn’t quite an Everesting

It turns out that due to some errors within Strava’s elevation data, Lachlan Morton didn’t actually get to 8,848m in 7:32:54. He was about 400 meters short.

It’s heartbreaking, and certainly wasn’t Morton’s fault. The good news is that Morton says he’s up for giving the record another shot.

The discrepancy was flagged by Canadian Cycling Magazine, which led us to ring up our favorite LiDAR mapping expert, Chris Crosby, to get an accurate elevation for the segment. Crosby’s data is clear: Strava said the lap gained 213m, but it actually only gains 200m. Alas.

| SRAM and Philly Bike Expo announce scholarship winners

For the second year, SRAM and the Philly Bike Expo partnered to fund the Inclusivity Scholarship for Framebuilders, supporting women, trans, and POC framebuilders, who have been underrepresented in the industry. This year’s scholarships are going to Guy Stone, Mari Anzicek, Caren Hartley, and Beth Morford. The four scholarship recipients will receive booth space at the expo and complete SRAM builds for their show bikes, plus travel and accommodation covered.

Congrats to the four framebuilders! Read more about them here.

| Saint Augustine’s launches first HBCU collegiate team

This news is actually over a month old, but we didn’t receive the press release when it first went out. Saint Augustine’s has become the first of America’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) to formally launch a collegiate cycling program.

Collegiate cycling is a well-worn path to the pro ranks, with riders like Ted King and Chad Haga rolling into the WorldTour after graduation, but it’s also simply a great way to create life-long cyclists. We’ll be following up with Saint Augustines with a full-length story.

In case you missed it

| The new Trek Emonda

Trek’s flagship climbing bike is now a much more versatile machine. Check out James Huang’s review here.

| Bontrager carbon wheels starting under $1,000USD

Alongside the new Emonda, Bontrager launched four new carbon wheels, starting at just $900USD.

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Today’s featured image of Chris Froome at the Critérium du Dauphiné comes from Cor Vos.