Matt White has opened up on how his surprise dismissal from Jayco-AlUla in May affected him, and eventually led to his just-announced move to Movistar.
The Australian sports director left Jayco on the eve of the Giro d’Italia after 14 years working for the various guises of the GreenEdge team. The team said that they had made the decision as they embarked on a new path towards “innovation, data-driven performance and talent development.”
In the ensuing months, no further comment from the team or White has been provided as to why he was suddenly dismissed. But in an interview with Escape Collective to mark his appointment as Movistar’s co-head of racing, White admitted that being told he was surplus to requirements at Jayco hurt him.
“At the start, I was in shock. There was disappointment,” he reflected. “It happened the day before I left to go to the Giro, an event I love and a race I’ve not missed for 20 years. Jayco had been my home for 14 years, and there are a lot of directors there who I worked with for a long time, and in some cases even brought them into the team.
“Mat Hayman and I go back 35 years – we were in state teams together when we were teenagers. David McPartland, Genes Bates, Andrew Smith, I’m really close to these guys – we’re mates besides being colleagues. I was Pieter Weening’s director for seven years at Jayco, and now he’s a DS there. I was teammates with Steve Cummings at Discovery and played a big part in bringing him across to the team from Ineos. All these guys touched base with me every couple of days, checking in on me and seeing if I was alright, like good friends do.”
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