The little post about the new Team Garmin-Barracuda kit and Castelli’s update revealed something quite interesting…Magura is signed on as a sponsor for the road-only pro cycling team.
It’s no secret that Magura is launching something big for road very soon. Their own people say not until February, but the Slipstream Sports team is set to roll into action at the Tour Down Under this weekend (Jan 15), so perhaps some eagle eyed fans will get a first look at what’s new.
The other obvious sponsor there is Rotor, but we’ve confirmed with them that they don’t have any magical new shifting systems up their sleeves, but also said “they’ll need some shifters to go with those brakes.” Either they’re being coy, or they’re just as in the dark as the rest of us.
At present, SRAM is still listed as a team sponsor on their website, but we suspect that’ll change for 2012 as it just doesn’t make sense that they’d split group up to run with brakes from another manufacturer, especially given the rumors that they’re working on their own hydraulic brake systems (oh, and yes, we’ve heard murmur that could even include hydraulic rim brakes!).
We’ve heard Cervelo, which is the team’s current bike sponsor, had some big news coming, but it was actually of a different type of bicycle. Whatever form that “big news” comes in, it’s good to see the brand is moving forward despite taking steps to sell the company.
At this point, we’re guessing the team will run with either custom integrated electronic shifting system from either Campy or, more likely, Shimano, or we’ll see something totally new. There’s rumor floating around it could be a road version of Acros’ hydraulic mountain bike shifters and derailleurs. The only thing we see holding that back would be fitting two master cylinders into a single shifter/lever unit, but hey, we’ve put people on the moon, right?
