'Push them outside their comfort zone' - Four-time USPro champion Freddie Rodriguez returns to cycling as co-owner and strategist for APS Pro Cycling by Cadence Cyclery

Giro d'Italia stage winner and multi-time USPro road champion Fred Rodriguez returns to professional cycling for what might be considered a fourth time. Known as 'Fast Freddie' during his 19-year racing career that covered 11 teams in the US and Europe, Rodriguez is a human 'transformer' who will now dictate strategies for other riders as a co-owner and manager for APS Pro Cycling by Cadence Cyclery.

The team debuts at the UCI 2.Pro Volta Comunitat Valenciana, February 4-8, in Spain, as one of a few invited Continental squads to face nine WorldTour squads, including Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe with time trial world and Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel.

"It's nice to be part of this, really cool to get back involved at a higher level with cycling," Rodriguez told Cyclingnews. "Once I retired from Jelly Belly [2015] I told Danny [van Haute, team director] that was the last team I was gonna race for. I started my own clothing company, have been coaching and I wanted to be really involved with my kids' development as a father. So I didn't want to travel too much. Now I have two kids in college.

"I've been growing these ideas, the way teams race and the way teams look at training and how we develop riders. I've been building this framework of how to coach the game-side of the sport. My goal is to bring a holistic approach. It's not just about how big the engine is, but can the engine make good decisions."

At the age of 42, Rodriguez announced his retirement in 2015 at the Tour of Alberta racing for Jelly Belly. His career included stage wins at the Giro d’Italia, Tour de Langkawi, Tour de Luxembourg, Tour de Suisse, Tour de Rhodes, and numerous second places in races like Milan-San Remo and Gent-Wevelgem. After racing nine years with European-based teams, he restarted his career several times when US-based squads closed operations. His last race was in the Team Time Trial at the Road World Championships in Richmond.

Rodriguez was in McKinney, Texas for winter camp with the new APS Pro Cycling team, APS standing for 'atleta prima sempre' and translated from Italian as 'athletes first, always'. The squad had just 11 riders, but they were quick learners, he said.

"At training camp here, it was all about creating these little miniature races between five to 10 minutes. They were literally racing each other, imagining being in a final breakaway for a race for the last 10 minutes, and they have to figure out how to win the race. They're learning how to be teammates, how to collaborate, how to make good decisions. This is more fun than doing an interval, and they're collaborating, being competitive. It pushes them outside their comfort zone."

The roster was comprised of a handful of experienced riders such as Great Britain's Adam Lewis and Irishman Conn McDunphy with under-23 talents Matthew Walls of Ireland and USA's Ethan Dunham. McDunphy won a stage each of the last two Tour de Beauce appearances and finished second to Keegan Swenson in The Growler at Levi's Gran Fondo last season.

The majority of riders moved from Team Skyline, which continues as a men's US Continental squad for an eighth season, Dunham, Lewis and McDunphy joined by Cian Keogh and Ronan O'Connor of Ireland and US duo Liam Flanagan and Alex St Andre. Gravel specialist Andrew Lydic, 24, joins for a renewed road campaign, with compatriots Patrick Welch, also 24, and Eddy Huntsman, 23, moving from US domestic elite teams. Walls, just 18, raced for a local Irish club last year.

It was a rider like Walls whom Rodriguez noted understood and executed the new training techniques quickly and would be an exciting rider to watch.

"He's grasping the ideas very naturally, so we're actually leaning on him," Rodriguez said about the winner of the junior editions of the Tour of Ireland and Volta Portugal last year. "We're not telling them what to do, the workout is helping them learn how to do it. Matthew is doing it so naturally, and the other guys are going to learn from this, from repetition of making the right breakaway, being in the right place at the right time."

Creating a new team

Rodriguez is one of three men who comprise the core of ownership and management for the team, joined by Jeff Makohon, former assistant sports director for Team Skyline, and Mike Norton, exercise physiologist and cycling coach.

Other pieces of the puzzle came together with the addition of Chad Plumlee, owner of Cadence Cyclery, and Chris Daggs, another former sports director from Team Skyline and Lux Development Plumlee, who's Cadence Cyclery retail stores now have two locations in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area in Texas and one in Encinitas, California will work on the marketing side in "driving sponsorships", which includes bike sponsor Van Rysel. Daggs will drive the team car in many races, serving as the main race director.

"Mike and I started talking, we thought there's some potentially different ways to do [a Continental team]. Mike's been working with Freddie on some projects. So the three paths just kind of aligned," Jeff Makohon told Cyclingnews about the collaborative trio with home bases in California, New Jersey and Texas.

"Mike and I said 'let's start a team'. We went to Chad [Plumlee] and he signed on to help drive equipment sponsorship and Chad's integral to the team as he's driving sponsorships. We only made the decision to launch the team one week before the UCI deadlines, so that effort is something that will be ongoing in 2026 as we determine how to bring more sponsor value as a collective."

With Van Rysel, the company only has two other pro teams they sponsor - WorldTour level Decathlon CMA CGM and French Continental squad Van Rysel Roubaix. Makohon said the company is "very, very interested in the US market".

"Freddie's the guy who's coming up with the strategies, changing the way the team races and looks at training, how we develop riders," Makohon said. "Freddie's really got the new idea around how to make a development team work and teach these guys how to race and make them marketable to bigger teams, until we get to the point that we could be one of those bigger teams."

The team wants to develop talent no matter the age of the rider. At the Continental level, the overriding goal was to give the riders experience in UCI races and get them noticed. The team looked to ride a handful of races in the US, including some gravel events, but the road races having UCI designations had priority.

"The older riders provide a lot of value to the younger guys as well, because of their experience, their professionalism. even though they're older, we still think that they could get on to a bigger team," Makohon said.

"We've got 12 national championships represented [by riders]. Every rider has raced for their national team at Worlds or l'Avenir or other races. It's Continental level, and they can animate the race and get there at the end. We bring some skins that the promoters want."

Cadence Cyclery will continue to be involved with a club team for juniors, men and women, Cadence Cyclery p/b Encore Wire, which had a criterium-heavy schedule last year featuring USPro criterium national champions Lucas Bourgoyne, who won the elite men's title, and Luke Fetzer, who won the U23 men's title.

APS Pro Cycling by Cadence Cyclery 2026 roster

• Ethan Dunham (USA)
• Liam Flanagan (USA)
• Eddy Huntsman (USA)
• Cian Keogh (IRE)
• Adam Lewis (GBR)
• Andrew Lydic (USA)
• Conn McDunphy (IRE)
• Ronan O'Connor (IRE)
• Alex St Andre (USA)
• Matthew Walls (IRE)
• Patrick Welch (USA)