After seven consecutive years on the WorldTour, the past four with Team Sky, American Danny Pate will return to home soil next year to ride for the Continental team Optum p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies.
“Danny sent me a message from Europe and we followed up on the phone,” Optum performance director Jonas Carney told Cyclingnews via email. “We’ve been friends since our first year on Prime Alliance in 2001 and we stay in touch, so it was pretty easy to connect. We both needed a little convincing, but after a couple of phone conversations it seemed like a really good fit.”
Pate, 36, has been a consummate domestique for Sky since joining the team in 2012, riding the Vuelta a Espana that year, the Giro d’Italia in 2013 and Tour de France last season. His last race with Sky was at the World Championships team trial in Richmond, where Sky finished ninth after several riders, including Pate, were injured in a heavy crash in a practice run the day before the race.
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Pate is one of six riders who did not renew with Team Sky for next year. The others were Nathan Earle, Bernhard Eisel, Richie Porte, Kanstantsin Siutsou and Chris Sutton.
He will help fill the void in Optum’s roster created when Mike Woods signed for Cannondale-Garmin next year. Carney also confirmed that Phil Gaimon did not renew with the team, although he could not comment on where Gaimon will be racing next year.
Carney said that after so many years of racing in Europe as a domestique, Pate seemed ready for a change “to spend more time in North America and to participate in the end of the races again.”
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