New US Bike Team: Hype & Ambition

Modern Adventure Pro Cycling pins on race numbers for the first time next week and debuts as America’s newest pro bike team with equal parts anticipation and anxiety.

The pressure and nerves are real as the first major U.S. men’s squad in more than a decade to enter the high-stakes, big-budget pro peloton readies for its first taste of competition.

Founded by ex-pro Gorg Back and partners, the U.S.-registered squad opens at the AlUla Tour (January 27-31), capping a year-long sprint to assemble funding, riders, staff, and infrastructure from scratch.

“It’s exciting. There are some nerves from some folks, but everyone’s excited to hit the start button on this project,” sport director Alex Howes told Velo. “For a lot of teams, AlUla won’t be the biggest race of the year, but for a new team like ours, it’s super exciting and a bit terrifying.

“It’s not San Dimas. There are WorldTour racers and teams, so we are super excited and grateful to be there.”

With the stated long-term ambition of reaching the Tour de France within five years and building an American “Dream Team” anchored around North American talent, the team is riding a wave of emotion as it prepares for its inaugural season.

Just getting the team off the ground and into its first slate of races is already a huge win for everyone inside the Modern Adventure bus.

Now comes the hard part.

Hincapie’s Rolodex serving up invites

After wrapping up its European training camp near Girona this week, Howes and his fellow staffers are finalizing logistics before flying to Saudi Arabia for a debut that feels outsized for a first-year project.

Invitations to a series of major races are already stacking up.

Team officials confirmed to Velo that the team will also line up at the Vuelta a la Región de Murcia, Vuelta a Andalucía Ruta Ciclista del Sol, and Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne. More are expected in the coming days.

Hincapie leaned heavily into a deep Rolodex built over two decades in the WorldTour peloton, and the response has been encouraging.

“We’re thankful that ASO (Tour de France organizers) picked up the phone when we called,” Howes said of the AlUla invite. “It’s pretty special for the whole organization.”

Those out-of-the-gate invites reveal there’s interest among race organizers to see another big American team in the international peloton.

This week, officials confirmed Modern Adventure will race the Volta a Catalunya (March 23-29), marking the team’s first WorldTour-level invite.

The spot opened after Picnic PostNL declined to start, creating space in a stacked field that will include Jonas Vingegaard in his final race before the Giro d’Italia, alongside the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe duo of Remco Evenepoel and Florian Lipowitz.

That’s heady company for a team that about 12 months was little more than an ambitious idea shared among friends and colleagues.

‘Like building a plane while it’s on the runway’

The squad is already stitching together an impressive first-year racing calendar that will keep the distinctive jerseys visible across Europe and at the top dates on the North American schedule.

A service course and team headquarters are built out in Girona, Spain, the cycling hotbed in Spain’s Catalunya region that’s been home to international cyclists for decades.

“It’s kind of like building the airplane while it’s on the runway,” Howes joked in a call with Velo. “But things are coming together rather impressively. It’s a huge project to build a team from scratch, and everyone’s been working full-time on this for a year.”

No one’s talking grand tours in its debut season. In fact, UCI rules won’t even allow it. Of course, building out a program to race in the Tour de France is the long game.

Long before dreaming of the yellow jersey will be years of hard work and even harder knocks. Even putting a few wins on the board would be massive for cycling’s newest startup.

This first season is more about unifying the 21-rider group into a cohesive racing unit and building credibility inside the peloton.

Balancing ambitions and hype

Speaking from the camp, Howes said the operation is ready to hit the pavement at full speed.

The team’s squad is a mix of top North American talenta handful of WorldTour refugees, and some diamonds-in-the-rough.

Everyone knows that racing in the top-level pro events is a whole level of competition that many on the team have yet to experience.

“The first focus of the team was building the culture. We wanted guys who would fit well together,” Howes said. “Now we have to transfer that into results. We’re not under pressure to chase points right out of the gate. We have stability with the team ownership, so we can focus on racing as a team and a unit, and get all the systems in place going forward.”

No wonder everyone’s a bit on edge.

The stakes are significant as Modern Adventure’s arrival marks the first major U.S. men’s team to launch with serious international ambitions since 2007.

For now, expectations remain grounded. Even if there are long-range goals of Tour de France glory, right now it’s more like Racing 101.

“It’s a bit terrifying to think our first race is next week, but it’s also exciting seeing everything we’re working on all falling into place,” Howes said. “We’ll be ready to compete, not just participate, but compete.”

First major US men’s team in more than a decade

American fans have been waiting for a new team since 2007, the year that saw three major North American programs enter the peloton.

Slipstream Sports debuted that year and evolved into today’s EF Education-EasyPost, still racing with a strong U.S. imprint nearly 20 years later at the highest level of the WorldTour peloton.

The Rally/Human Powered Health program also launched in 2007, later establishing deep European roots before shutting down its men’s program at the end of 2023 to focus on its women’s squad.

BMC Racing, led by former 7-Eleven and Motorola boss Jim Ochowicz, also emerged the same year, won the Tour de France with Cadel Evans in 2011, and then exited the sport after its merger with CCC during the COVID-impacted 2020 season.

Since then, American cycling has suffered a series of dire setbacks, from race closures to teams shutting down. Criterium racing and the booming gravel scene are helping to keep the pulse pumping domestically.

Modern Adventure backers believe there’s hunger among American fans for a fresh road racing team with big European ambitions.

“We’re trying to build excitement in the States,” Howes said. “We want to give American fans someone to cheer for, and maybe some big sponsors can get back into the action as well. We want to do our part to build the sport up.”

It all starts next week in Saudi Arabia.