EF Education First Nippon has announced the addition of a men's development team as a feeder team to its WorldTour team. Although not mentioned in the press release, it appears that this new continental team will take over from the Nippo Provence PTS team from Switzerland, which was racing as a continental team this season. Ten riders from this season's team will move to the new EF Education First Nippo with coach Marcello Albasini.

"This idea has developed over the years. When I approached Jonathan Vaughters, CEO of EF Procycling, about creating an official development team, he thought it was a great idea."

The team will be registered as an American team, but will have only one American rider, 18-year-old Ethan Villaneda, a two-time podium finisher at this year's junior championships. Japanese riders Masahiro Ishigami, Sei Oda, and Atsushi Oka

Yuki Tsuda, Swiss riders Jonathan Bogli, Fabio Christen, Luca Jenni, and Feliz Stehli, as well as cyclo-cross rider Kevin Kuhn, and Hagos Berehe from Ethiopia will also participate. Trim Brennsæter from Norway, Oliver Wulff Frederiksen from Denmark, and Szymon Tracz from Paul will be on the roster.

"It's very important that we don't get hung up on specific countries, like "it's an American team" or "it's only Swiss" or "it's only Japanese." We are a very international team," Albasini said. 'We want to attract talented players from all over the world and bring them into our professional system.'

The team aims to prepare riders to move on to the World Tour, with the goal of having one rider on the World Team roster by 2022.

"We have some really strong young riders who are at the stage of knocking on the door to become professionals," Albasini said.

The UCI changed its rules to allow development riders to compete on the World Tour.

"This means that in a given race, two World Tour riders and four Continental riders will be in the same race. We could send one or two of our top riders to a World Tour team to work in a higher or more professional environment."

Jonathan Vaughters, CEO of Slipstream, said he is excited to bring a team into the organization. Vaughters said, "I think it's really important for riders to have a team they can learn from, but it's not going to get out of hand any time soon." We can move riders from one team to another so we can bring some real experience to the younger teams."

"And it's also important that teams focus on developing riders from countries that are not known as cycling battlegrounds. It provides a great opportunity for riders to be noticed and to discover talent that may have been overlooked. The education and mentoring component is very important to us. We started as a development team a few years ago, so it's fun to be able to participate at this level of cycling again."