Neilson Powless (Axeon Hagens Berman) was on the receiving end of some good news last week when LottoNL-Jumbo announced it had signed the 21-year-old American to a two-year deal. The Dutch WorldTour team was not Powless’ first pick, however. Cyclingnews looks into the mechanics of this promising neo-pro's WorldTour deal.
The California native told Cyclingnews he had been talking with Jonathan Vaughters at Cannondale-Drapac since last year. They came to an agreement, Powless said, and the team was supposed to send him a contract on August 1 while he was racing at the Tour of Utah. The contract never came, however, and it still hadn’t arrived in the last half of August when Powless was in France with the national team at the Tour de l’Avenir.
Then news came that Cannondale-Drapac, the US World Tour team owned by Slipstream Sports, might not return in 2018 and all riders were released from their 2018 contracts.
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“So basically [Vaughters] called my agents Alex and Caleb Fairly and told them that the team was folding and I didn’t have a job anymore,” Powless said by phone from Norway, where he is preparing to compete at the UCI Road World Championships in the U23 time trial and road race.
Vaughters publicly asked riders to give the team two weeks to find a new sponsor, but Powless’ agents immediately went to work putting their rider back on the market.
“They had four offers on the table within a week and a half,” Powless said. “That was really impressive on their end. They had multiple riders who were going through the same thing, and to be able to put something like that together in a week and some change is really impressive.
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