In 2018, the Australian Cycling Academy Continental team will provide a pathway into the professional ranks of young Australian riders. Created by former professionals Ben Kersten and Matt Wilson, the primarily U23 development team is backed by the University of the Sunshine Coast and Sunshine Coast Council for a minimum of three years. The team will be known as ACA-Ride Sunshine Coast.
Former WorldTour rider Leigh Howard will captain the team which also includes current team pursuit world champions Sam Welsford and Kelland O'Brien on a 13-rider roster. The team's race programme will include the National Road Series (NRS) in Australia with the aim to also compete aboard, including across Asia.
For Kersten and Wilson, the team is a realisation of a dream years in the making that was always about providing a pathway to a professional contract for young riders. The team also pays tribute to their shared father-in-law, the late Garth Prowd.
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"Matt and I spoke about it for years about how we would do a development team if we did one ourselves and everything just came together at once," Kersten told Cyclingnews of the team's genesis. "We decided this might be the perfect opportunity. At the same time, Cycling Australia was going through a crisis and at the time we didn't know what they were going to do. But you could see the road was going to be scaled back and the institutes would be scaled back. It as really the ideal time."
While helping the project, Wilson remains fully committed to his role as a sports director on Orica-Scott with the ACA Kersten's 'baby'. Through his role with the New South Wales Institute of Sport and its now-defunct Continental team in recent years, Kersten knows the depth and quality of the Australian cycling scene as well as anyone. When it came to putting together a roster, Kersten explained it was an easy decision to focus on youth with a number of his NSWIS riders also making the move across to the new team.
"I think that is where the biggest gains can be made for Australian cycling. At grassroots and young level," he said of the focus on development. "The scaling back of the WorldTour Academy team with Cycling Australia meant there was less and less opportunity for good young Australian riders. The only option really was to go into small NRS teams or go by yourself into Europe unless they were the top tier but the top tier is always going to be ok. They will always find spots but it's the second tier of guys who need a few more years."
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