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Cannondale team adds Drapac as co-title sponsor ahead of the Tour de France

Cannondale Pro Cycling will be known as Cannondale-Drapac Pro Cycling from the 2016 Tour de France and beyond in a co-sponsorship deal announced this week. The deal with the US-registered team will run for five years.

“Michael Drapac and I have been friends for some time. I have always been impressed with his entrepreneurial vision and understanding of markets. However, what piqued my interest in partnering with Michael is his passion for helping athletes find their way through life in a healthier way,” Slipstream CEO Jonathan Vaughters said. “Although it’s seldom acknowledged, most professional cyclists have given up everything in order to pursue excellence in their sport. While commendable, this leaves them very vulnerable to an ever more complex world.”

“I’ve always been interested in sustainability, particularly cultural sustainability,” Michael Drapac said. “Sustainability is being aware, responsible, and accountable for the full costs of what we do, and trying to minimize the impact of those costs. So a sustainable initiative, in business, cycling, anything, really, is about making an intention to be aware, accountable, and responsible. And making an intention to minimize the impact of what we do."

“We want to win bike races, but not at the expense of broader values. Sustainability in this sense is about ‘what are the broader values in the cycling team?’ We need to look at that. We want to win the Tour de France. We want to win Paris-Roubaix. But we also have other metrics by which we measure our success.”

While little will change for the existing Drapac team in 2016, the partnering of the two teams in 2017 will see the bulk of the resources from the current Drapac Professional Cycling Team transitioned to Drapac-Pat’s Veg, the Continental-level development team announced earlier this year, while also providing the opportunity for a number of riders and staff to move to the WorldTour at Cannondale-Drapac.

Cannondale team adds Drapac as co-title sponsor ahead of the Tour de France