Giorgia Bronzini will depart from Trek-Segafredo and move into a new sports director's role at Liv Racing in 2022. The former double world champion brings decades of bike racing expertise along with three years of top-tier directing experience to the Women's WorldTeam.
The team has also hired former Dutch pro cyclist Wim Stroetinga as sports director and performance manager, as part of a revamped sports management team.
“After my career as a professional cyclist, I immediately got into the team’s car. For three years I had the opportunity to work with many world-class riders. I am very grateful to Trek-Segafredo for that. But I notice that it is now time to go for a new challenge. I want to play a more important role in training upcoming talents. I want to be closer to the personal trainers of the riders, work more closely with the performance management and thus be of even bigger value to the riders," Bronzini said.
"At Liv Racing there is plenty of room for this within the newly developed coaching structure. The aim is to improve the individual riders and to ride race finals with them. I want to put everyone in a position to win. In this way we want to raise the overall level of the team. The long-term goal is to structurally compete for wins in big UCI Women’s WorldTour races.”
Bronzini retired from professional cycling at the end of 2018, after a 16-year career, and joined Trek-Segafredo's women's team as a second director alongside Ina Teutenberg, where she has been working since 2019.
Liv Racing announced in June that it parted ways with performance manager Lars Boom, who will direct SD Worx in 2022. Liv Racing also stated, at that time, that they were working on a new way of coaching their athletes and a new coaching programme behind the scenes.
“Liv Racing is a team that I have valued highly. The team inspires me with its way of racing. The riders always try to make the race hard, there is always a clear tactical plan behind it. Liv Racing is also known in the peloton as a very friendly, accessible team," Bronzini said.
"As a rider and sports director, I have fought many sporting battles with riders from the team. On the bike we were rivals, but apart from that we were always very friendly. Respect is an important core value in professional sport. The respect at Liv Racing also stems from the way the team is managed. In combination with the professional perspective it therefore feels very good to continue at Liv Racing.”
Bronzini amassed over 80 victories on the road and the track, including two UCI Road World Championship titles (2010 and 2011) and the Points Race World Championship in 2009. She also won stages of the Giro Rosa, Route de France, Tour of Qatar, the Amgen Women's Race and most recently the Tour of Chongming Island.
Stroetinga will form part of the sports management team as a director and performance manager. He steps up from the development team NXTG Racing where he was also a sports director.
“After I stopped racing professionally last year I started working as a bike mechanic at a retail shop and as a sports director at the development team NXTG. I am proud that a large and well-organised team like Liv Racing came to me at this stage. It shows appreciation. Anyone who knows me from my past as a road and track cyclist knows that I have always been very interested in issues such as materials, seating positions and aerodynamics. I am happy to use this knowledge and experience to optimise various performance-related issues at Liv Racing. A lot of small improvements together can often make a big difference. I combine the role of performance manager with that of sports director," Stroetinga said.
“Giorgia has of course created fame as a sprinter. And I also have the necessary sprinter experience. It would be great if we could give the sprint element some extra attention within Liv Racing. I know how to set up a sprint train, which side to choose. And Giorgia has a lot of experience in that as well. She also knows how sprints work in the women’s peloton. In that sense, we complement each other perfectly.”
The team has secured another three-year commitment from its title sponsor, with the Liv cycling brand providing certainty for the squad by extending its support of the Women’s WorldTeam through till the end of 2024.
