Australian Continental team Avanti IsoWhey Sports will continue in 2017 but will do so without Avanti as its title sponsor. The top National Road Series (NRS) team over the last six years have also been the premier development team over the last decade, sending the likes of Richie Porte, Jack Haig and Paddy Bevin to the WorldTour with Chris Hamilton and Ben O'Connor the latest riders to go WorldTour from the Tasmanian team.
The team changed its name from Huon Salmon-Genesys Wealth Advisers to Avanti from the 2014 season once the bike brand came on board as its new naming rights sponsor. The team name for 2017 will include IsoWhey Sports, with its full title dependent on securing new sponsors.
"We are going to be around, but what size we don't know at the moment," team manager Andrew Christie-Johnston told Cyclingnews. "We've lost Avanti as a naming rights sponsor but IsoWhey Sports are still on-board as a naming rights sponsor. So we are searching to replace Avanti's share of it. We've found some smaller sponsors at this stage to come on board to support that and we are waiting on a few meetings over the next week or so to confirm if we can replace the lot.
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"We will be around as a Conti team next year, we might just be slightly smaller in team size and with a little bit less of a budget."
While the team has been the most consistent of the Australian domestic squads in recent years, the current state of flux in the NRS was one of the reasons for Avanti to withdraw its naming rights sponsorship as Christie-Johnston explained.
"It was a while ago, they gave us good notice but basically the state of the NRS was one of the major things," Christie-Johnston said. "They thought there wasn't enough value in it and that was one of the things that was mentioned. We've had a great relationship with Avanti for a long period time, even before it was Avanti it was Malvern Star and at the end of the day there are no sponsors who will stay around forever. They decided they didn't have it in their budget to assist the team as a naming rights sponsor. They still want to be involved as a bike sponsor, it's not like they totally want to withdraw from it but I would say it's a monetary reason more than anything."
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