Garmin-Transitions confirm Cervélo replaces Felt as bike sponsor for next season

Team Garmin-Transitions has this afternoon confirmed that as of next season it will be swapping Felt bikes for Cervélo, which comes as little surprise following this weeks rumours, confirmed by the Canadian bike brand yesterday evening, that the men’s Cervélo TestTeam squad is being disbanded at the end of this season.

Team Garmin-Transitions has this afternoon confirmed that as of next season it will be swapping Felt bikes for Cervélo, which comes as little surprise following this weeks rumours, confirmed by the Canadian bike brand yesterday evening, that the men’s Cervélo TestTeam squad is being disbanded at the end of this season.

In a statement, Slipstream Sports, owner of Garmin-Transitions, said that it had met with Felt who had an option to continue as bike sponsor of the team in 2011, and that “after careful consideration Felt Bicycles chose not to exercise its option.”

The statement said that “Felt has been an invaluable partner since the inception of our organization and is truly an exceptional company. Together we achieved quite a bit and we have a tremendous amount of respect and gratitude for the contributions and innovations they have made to our team, organization and to cycling as a whole.”

Felt added: “Our organizations met in good faith to discuss an extension. After exploring all options, we decided for the good of all parties to move on. We have enjoyed great success over the course of our four-year relationship and we wish the team and its athletes continued success in the future. Felt remains committed to the sport of bicycle racing and the ideal that accompanies professional cycling. Rest assured we will continue to support elite teams and athletes in the future.”

The confirmation that Garmin-Transitions will be riding Cervélo frames next year does raise questions about what groupset they’ll use – currently, the team’s Felt bikes are Shimano-equipped while in January this year Cervélo TestTeam announced that SRAM was sponsoring it.

The other issue is that since Cervélo bikes tend to come in any colour as long as it’s black, white or red, to paraphrase Henry Ford, will they now bear Garmin-Transitions’ distinctive orange and blue Argyle paint job?

You’ve probably noticed that we like a bit of Argyle ourselves here at road.cc, so we’ve been in touch with Garmin-Transitions regarding that and the groupset issue, and they’ve said they'll let us have the answers as soon as more information becomes available.