Budget caps, safety and the future of GreenEdge - Domestique Hotseat with Brent Copeland
Brent Copeland rarely gives interviews. As General Manager of GreenEdge Cycling (Team Jayco AlUla and Liv AlUla Jayco) and President of the AIGCP, the teams' union, he sits inside almost every room where cycling's future is being decided. In this conversation, he opens up on all of it.
We start with the Giro d'Italia: the stage 2 crash that took out Andrea Vendrame and changed the entire race, and what the Tour de France build-up looks like with Michael Matthews on the moment.
From there we go deep into SafeR, the body working on rider safety. Copeland explains how every crash in pro cycling now gets logged and analysed, the real story behind the handlebar width rule, and what actually happened with the SRAM gear restriction case. Then the big one: money. Copeland makes the case for a budget cap in professional cycling.
He explains how average WorldTour budgets have nearly tripled since 2012, why losing Mauro Schmid came down to an offer 40% over market price, what he learned from the people who introduced salary caps to the AFL and NRL, and why he believes the current model is unsustainable. And he addresses the question every Australian fan is asking: what happens to the team when Gerry Ryan steps back?
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