Davis joins GreenEdge cycling team

Allan Davis, the Commonwealth Games road race champion and former Tour Down Under winner, has become the latest Australian to sign for the nascent GreenEdge team, it was announced Tuesday. Although he won bronze on a tough world road championships course in Geelong, Australia last year, the Queensland sprinter failed to make the cut for the road world championships being held in Copenhagen this week. Davis, however, has the 2012 Olympic Games within his sights and aims to work his way back into the team ahead of London. "The style of race that we should have at the Olympics suits me," Davis said in a GreenEdge statement. "I was third at the World Championships last year, fifth in 2004, despite getting tangled up with another rider a few hundred metres from the finish line, and twelfth in my second year as a professional in 2003. "So I'd be silly not to try and get a good result in these sorts of races." He added: "It's a privilege to ride for your country, so the first step in achieving my goals at the Olympics and World Championships is to get the results needed to be selected for the team." Currently in his second year with Astana, which did not fulfil a pledge to allow him to race the Tour de France in July, Davis is set to sit down with GreenEdge at the end of the season to plan his 2012 campaign. GreenEdge are set to become the first Australian-registered team in the elite peloton and hope to acquire a UCI ProTour licence in order to compete in the 2012 season -- which should be helped by the signing of top names so far. Matthew Goss, who won Milan-Sanremo in March while riding for HTC-Highroad, has signed for the team joining fellow Australians Jack Bobridge, Simon Gerrans, Cameron Meyer, Travis Meyer, Stuart O'Grady, Robbie McEwen, Baden Cooke, Matt Wilson, Simon Clarke and Leigh Howard. The team has also signed up and coming Belgian Jens Keukeleire, Lithuanian Tomas Vaitkus, veteran Canadian champion Svein Tuft, Dutch trio Jens Mouris, Pieter Weening and Sebastian Langeveld, multiple African champion Daniel Teklehaymanot of Eritrea and Swiss Michael Albasini. The championships end with the blue riband event of the men's elite road race on Sunday, a 266 km epic in which Goss is one of the main contenders.