Discovery adds two more

The Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team has announced the addition of two riders, Antonio Cruz and Brian Vandborg, to the 2007 Team roster. Cruz returns to the Discovery Channel squad where he was a member for five years (2001-2005) while Vandborg is leaving the Danish CSC Team after three seasons on that squad.

The 25 year-old Vandborg had a break-out season this year, being crowned as the Danish National Time Trial Champion and then finishing the season just off the podium at the World Championships Time Trial. Vandborg, who also had an offer from the Belgian team Unibet, is very happy about the change since his girlfriend lives in California. "That way, everything just falls into place."

The young Dane is still overwhelmed by the development: "Suddenly, Rolf (Sørensen, his agent) called and said Discovery were interested, which is, of course, more interesting for me than Unibet. It's all a bit overwhelming, and I suppose I'll only really realise everything when we go to the first team meeting in Austin in December. I have also spoken with Johan Bruyneel", he added "[and said] that I would like to ride the Tour of California, but we haven't talked about a race programme apart from that yet."

Cruz returns to Discovery after one year on the Toyota United Pro team, where he spent the season racing in the US. He won the Tour de Nez (Reno, NV) and finished third at the US Pro Criterium Championship, but after spending the season racing domestically, Tony decided he wanted to return to the Pro Tour ranks. "After only one year away I realized just how much I missed European racing, in countries like Belgium and in races like Paris-Roubaix. I’m happy there was an opportunity for Johan to bring me back to the Discovery Team."

Cruz and Vandborg are the seventh and eighth riders to join the 2007 squad. Other recent additions to the Team include: Levi Leipheimer, Sergio Paulinho, Tomas Vaitkus, Uros Murn, Gianni Meersman, and the Team’s first Chinese rider, Fuyu Li.

Katharina Schulz contributed to this report