page_title: 2011 Garmin–Cervélo season
section_title: Dismissal of Matt White
hierarchical_section_title: 2011 Garmin–Cervélo season / Away from competition / Dismissal of Matt White
caption_attribution_description: Named cyclist at the en:2009 Tour Down Under team presentation
context_page_description: The 2011 season for the Garmin–Cervélo cycling team began in January at the Tour Down Under and ended in October at the Noosa Grand Prix. As a UCI ProTeam, they were automatically invited and obligated to send a squad to every event in the UCI World Tour.
  For 2011, the team added Cervélo as a major co-sponsor, after they had, for two seasons, fronted their own professional team, the Cervélo TestTeam. Seven riders from Cervélo TestTeam joined Garmin-Cervélo for 2011, perhaps chief among them reigning world champion Thor Hushovd.
  The team took 26 victories in 2011, 25 of which officially count. After having raced the Tour de France for the last three years without any victories, they took four stage wins and the team award at the 2011 Tour. Also a first for the team, they held the yellow jersey for a week with Hushovd. They also placed a rider in the top ten overall – Tom Danielson in ninth. They also took stage wins at both of the season's other Grand Tours, though their Giro d'Italia was marred by the death of Wouter Weylandt, a close friend of Garmin-Cervélo rider Tyler Farrar.
context_section_description: On January 24, the day after the Tour Down Under ended, Garmin–Cervélo dismissed Matt White, an Australian former cyclist who had been a sporting director for them since 2008. White was the team's director at the Tour Down Under. This was announced one week after the long-rumored formation of a new top-level Australian team, known under the name GreenEDGE, was confirmed for 2012. White, as well as riders Cameron Meyer and Jack Bobridge, had been speculated to be bound for the new team, since the contracts of all three expire at the end of 2011.
  Vaughters denied that this link was the case, and the team's official announcement gave a different reason for White's firing. Officially, White was released for referring former team rider Trent Lowe to a Spanish doctor named Luis Garcia del Moral, who has been implicated in several doping cases. This referral took place in April 2009. Garcia del Moral had been the team doctor for the U.S. Postal Service team for the first five of Lance Armstrong's consecutive Tour de France victories, a period during which Floyd Landis claims he witnessed and participated in organized doping with the team, and was otherwise involved in some suspect activities during that time. However, Garcia del Moral's checkered past may not have figured into White's firing – the team stated that White had violated an important internal rule simply by sending Lowe to a doctor outside the team's employ or without approval of the medical staff.
  Complicating the story were reports that Lowe had blackmailed the team's management with publicly revealing the fact that he had been sent to see Garcia del Moral, demanding the unpaid portion from his 2010 contract (which was withheld due to Lowe riding with the equipment for his presumed 2011 team, Pegasus, while still under contract to Garmin). Lowe's lawyer later refuted the blackmail claims, but Lowe bringing up the matter is the reason, per Vaughters, why White was fired for an incident which took place nearly two years prior.
  The firing was done by mandate of the Slipstream Sports board of directors, which consists of Vaughters, team owner Doug Ellis, and team president Matt Johnson. Vaughters flew to Adelaide to personally dismiss White after he had not been present at the Tour Down Under. He also informed the Tour Down Under squad, while the team's other riders were informed via a conference call to the team's training camp in Girona. Riders reacted with shock, since White had been an integral part in the team rising from a US-based team with limited presence in Europe to be one of the biggest in the world.
  White, for his part, took the decision stride, saying that, with Cervélo as a new corporate sponsor and several new riders on the team from the defunct Cervélo TestTeam, the team's focus and direction for 2011 was different from in prior years. White felt his energies could be better spent elsewhere. White had the week prior been appointed as Cycling Australia's professional men's road coordinator. Cycling Australia conducted their own investigation into the reasons behind White's firing, and kept him on in the position.
  White's immediate successor was Vaughters himself. Shortly afterward, the team hired Peter Van Petegem as classics advisor, with a short-term contract running from the beginning of March until Paris–Roubaix on April 10. The timing of the contract was to avoid an appearance of impropriety due to Van Petegem's role with the organizers of Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and his own full-time job as an insurance broker. Van Petegem had, in his cycling career, won both Paris–Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders. He also served as a consultant with the Astana team in 2010 helping Alberto Contador learn to ride the cobbles that figured into stage 4 of the 2010 Tour de France. This relationship had proved fruitful as Contador gained time on most of his rivals in that cobbled stage en route to winning the Tour de France; analysis had credited Van Petegem for Contador's success. With Van Petegem in the team car, Garmin-Cervélo won Paris–Roubaix with Johan Vansummeren
caption: Matt White had been a member of the team's management since 2008, but he was abruptly sacked after the Tour Down Under.
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