Bahrain-Merida has confirmed Austrian Hermann Pernsteiner will join the WorldTour team from 2018. Pernsteiner, a mountain biker, joined Continental team Amplatz BMC last year and has remained with the squad this season.
Pernsteiner's notable results in 2017 included second at Tour d'Azerbaïdjan, sixth at the Tour of Slovenia, and 12th at the Tour of Austria.
Pernsteiner follows in the footsteps of Ondrej Cink in moving from the mountain bike to the WorldTour with Bahrain-Merida and is also targeting hilly stages races.
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"I am really happy and pleased that I will start my professional road career with Bahrain-Merida Team," said Pernsteiner. "It is one of the best teams in the world, with big names in it. It is a big step in my career. The team is a very young one with a great future ahead. I am highly motivated for my debut in Bahrain-Merida jersey. As a climber, I think I can help the team in the mountains and on stage races. I also want to develop further on the physical and tactical field to accomplish better results for Bahrain-Merida in the future."
Bahrain-Merida general manager Brent Copeland explained the team has prided itself on providing an avenue to the top third of the sports and believes its trust placed in Pernsteiner will be repaid.
"Giving an opportunity to a talented cyclist such as Hermann is something we at Bahrain-Merida take a lot of pride in, Hermann has so far mainly shown his talent on the MTB however we believe he has a huge amount of margin to improve on the road, we have been keeping a close eye on him since our coaching staff did some physiological tests on him earlier in the year, we were very pleasantly surprised with the results, our immediate thought was what he could do on the road with such impressive results and decided to give him this opportunity, we then saw he got two top 10 placings in GC standings which proved to back up what our coaching staff had told us, we very excited to see Hermann riding in our colours next year and can’t wait to see him showing us what his pure climbing talent can do in the mountains, we welcome him to the team and are confident he will show the road cycling world what he has already shown the MTB world," said Copeland.
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