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Life for Alison Jackson next season is going to look much the same, but a little bit different as she switches from the EF Education-TIBCO-SVB squad to EF Education-Cannondale for 2024.
Defending Paris-Roubaix champion, Jackson is one of the headline signings for the new team with the likes of Veronica Ewers and Coryn Labecki joining her on the roster. The new squad will be managed by Esra Tromp, who was previously the manager at Jumbo-Visma’s women’s team.
The 34-year-old Canadian has had her best season to date with a memorable win at Paris-Roubaix in the spring, alongside regaining her national road race title in the summer. Jackson hopes that the move will help her build on what she’s achieved this season while also allowing her to continue to express her outgoing personality the way she has done over the last few years.
“I’m excited. It was such disappointing news to hear that EF-TIBCO-SVB was going to end and Linda [Jackson] wasn’t going to be able to continue with the team, but I love working with the brands and the sponsors that we had,” Jackson told Velo. “A lot of it is just how my personality is and what we could do together with different film projects or media things. It was just really a lot of fun and when I’m having fun, I can have some great races.
“The resources will be the same as the men’s with a little bit more crossover. When I was on Sunweb in 2020 that was something I really appreciated. All the resources, staffing, and setup for racing, and the mentality that has been in place for so long on the men’s side. How to get the most out of athletes and not just let athletes on their own trying to become the best that they can to show up at the race, but really being more involved in all the build-up in the procedure and the planning. I’m really looking forward to that and trying to get more out of myself.”
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As a completely new team, EF Education-Cannondale will run at Continental level next season with the WorldTour licenses being divvied up for the next two seasons at the end of this year. It will mean waiting on invitations for races rather than the automatic invites that are offered to the 15 teams in the top tier.
Nevertheless, Jackson is confident that the roster the team has will see it into the major races it wants to do.
“On the women’s side of things, there’s still a lot of room for Continental teams to race at the very best races,” she said. “We don’t have the automatic invites, but I think the team has a great relationship with race organizers. For me, my goal is a lot of these spring classics and the Flanders organization just want to have as many teams as possible in the races. Being the reigning Paris-Roubaix champion will also help us get the invites.
“I think it’ll be good to get into some of some of these smaller races, and really work to practice that winning. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. It opens up a lot of opportunities.”
Leaving Linda
Alison Jackson at the Tour de France Femmes (Photo: Alex Broadway/Getty Images)
The switch to the new EF Education-Cannondale set-up comes on the back of the demise of the EF Education-TIBCO-SVB team. Though the teams had lots of crossover in sponsors and the men’s team lent some staff support, they were not run as joint operations.
Linda Jackson ran the women’s team while Jonathan Vaughters ran the men’s with each owning their respective licenses. News emerged over the summer that Vaughters would be creating his own women’s team, EF Education-Cannondale, while it was confirmed this month that the existing WorldTour team would fold.
The start of the demise came early in the season when the Silicon Valley Bank collapsed in March. TIBCO later pulled out and with EF Education First jumping ship to the new set-up, the writing was on the wall.
“Linda was always clear with us. When the SVB as a company folded, then we knew that we had to find a new sponsor, or for sure, the team couldn’t continue,” Jackson said. “By that time, I had won Paris-Roubaix and I knew in a lot of ways that I was going to be okay. When you have a big result like that, teams won’t be afraid to bring you on board. It was about being patient with how the news would roll out and seeing what Linda could do and what she wanted to do.”
Linda Jackson’s team has been one of the stalwarts of the women’s peloton over the past two decades, helping to catapult a big number of North Americans into the pro ranks. Alison Jackson was one of those that she helped, along with the likes of Veronica Ewers and Kristen Faulkner.
Jackson credits the team with giving her the experience in racing abroad and putting her on the path to where she is now.
“When I was on the team in 2018 and 2019, I was given a lot of opportunities to race. For me, that was really important to take me to the next step. To have a really solid European program with a mix of American races to gain that confidence of winning, and then get into the bigger leagues. Even when I left, I was watching the team to and seeing what it was doing and how it was growing, because it was always Linda’s intent to really take it to be one of the best teams in the world.
“She really had a special eye for Canadians and wanting to help Canadians get to the Olympics and compete against the best. It was great to be working with her for those years.”
Women’s cycling on the move
Alison Jackson at the world championships in Glasgow (Photo: Will Matthews/PA Images via Getty Images)
Though the new EF Education-Cannondale team is restricted from applying for a WorldTour license until the end of the 2025 season, it may not have to race at Continental level for the next two years. The UCI announced earlier this month that the competition for places in the top tier had led it to bring forward the planned introduction of a ProTeam level for the 2025 season.
Details of how eligibility will be reached has not been revealed but a strong debut season could see the team in the position to apply. Becoming a ProTeam would help guarantee entries into some of the bigger races, but Jackson thinks it’s also a good development for women’s cycling.
Work on the lower ranks of the sport is beginning to take more shape after several years of major development at the top. In addition to the ProTeam level set to be introduced for 2025, there is a serious growth in development teams after the UCI made them official this year.
“There was quite the boom after 2020. When knew we were going to have the first Tour de France, it really got a lot of teams and people excited about having a Women’s WorldTour team. But there are a lot of races, there are so many races that want to be WorldTour and it’s I think it’s too many for any one WorldTour team to compete at every race. That’s why I think when we develop that second tier of racing, good races don’t have to be World Tour, but the race organizations still feel like it’s a great status to be in that sort of second tier.
“It’s also good for the sustainability of our sport and it helps the pathway. Development teams that are done in a professional way, trains younger riders in what being a part of a team is, rather than just you know, getting a group together, and anyone can win, it’s not as professional. When there are more resources, it’s going to create better bike racers. When we start creating better bike racers at the lower levels, it’s going to build up a better top level of racing as well.”
Amidst all of the changes for the good, there have also been some negative developments recently. Some longstanding races have disappeared off the calendar while the demise of the EF Education-TIBCO-SVB squad is a sad milestone for the sport.
There have been concerns that change is being made too quickly and that it could damage the sport. However, Jackson thinks that the speed is good and that there will be challenging times for some but that is part of the progression.
“It has to move fast. I mean, it was lagging so far behind it was, we were living in the dark ages. I think the momentum has been so good with the Tour, and more visibility with Women’s WorldTour racing having to be televised,” Jackson said. “It’s in a consistent place now for fans to go look for the entertainment and watch the racing, and the stories unfold. There’ll be growing pains as things shift and move and to be a WorldTour team, you’re going to have to have a bigger budget.
“It’s not going to be positive for everyone all the way through, but overall, I think it’s good. We were really far behind and so it’s going to move quickly with the product that we have. We’re going to push it pretty far.”