It’s the end of an era. When 2024 comes to a close, so too will the men’s BridgeLane team, thereby ending one of the most successful tenures in Australian cycling history.
Since 2000 (or perhaps even earlier), Andrew Christie-Johnston has been at the helm of one of Australia’s top domestic teams. Through that team – known as Praties, Genesys Wealth Advisors, Avanti Racing, and BridgeLane, among many incarnations – Christie-Johnston has helped a bevy of riders step up to the WorldTour; among them Richie Porte, Jack Haig, Chris Harper, and Ben O’Connor. But in 2025, for the first time in a quarter-century, Christie-Johnston won’t run a men’s team.
“It’s been a pretty tough decision to make, and it’s probably as much about my choice, [as much as] anything,” Christie-Johnston told Escape. “Markus [Kahlbetzer], the owner of BridgeLane, has been really supportive with the team for a long period of time, but it’s just one of those things where we’ve been constantly looking for sponsorship to grow the team. The biggest problem with taking a men’s and women’s team on is that we don’t have the resources to run it without me spending 100 hours a week. And I just can’t sustain it any longer.
“To be honest, I’ve just been flat out and don’t really get a lot of life, and I sort of can’t do what I want to do. I enjoy going to the races and doing all that [but] I’m just so office-bound with it all that unless I [could] grow the budget to get that support, I had to scale back.”
In 2023, the man many know as “ACJ” added a women’s team to the BridgeLane organisation, with the assistance of his former rider Pat Shaw and a successful crowdfunding campaign. In planning for 2025, Christie-Johnston had a decision to make. If he was going to scale back his involvement with the team, would he cut the long-running men’s team, or the much-newer women’s team?
“I think that Pat’s enthusiasm for the women’s team was important to me, and I think that it was obvious that I really need to keep that program going, and that’s something that I can sustain myself,” Christie-Johnston said. “But at the moment, to try and do both, it was just too challenging.”
Ending the men’s team was far from an easy decision though. Christie-Johnston says the decision has taken its toll on him.
“It’s extremely sad,” he said. “Probably not that personally sad – it just feels like you’ve let people down. Your current crop of riders, you know, just having to reach out to them and let them know they need to start looking elsewhere. And I think that’s really challenging for me, because you know that there’s not a lot out there, and that’s disappointing, and I’ve been struggling a bit with that. I’ve always done it for others.
“It’s sad to see that it’s been going so long, and it won’t be going ahead next year, but it’s been a great journey and I’m lucky that I’ve had a lot of support and a lot of great sponsors. Markus from BridgeLane has been amazing – a super human being. Not just supporting me as far as the team, but just me with how best to manage all this.”
Christie-Johnston nearly wrapped up the team six years ago. In 2018, his fellow co-owner, Steve Price, decided to step away, to spend more time with family. Christie-Johnston very nearly did the same. But in chatting to Tom Petty, manager of the then-rival Mobius-BridgeLane team, Christie-Johnston saw a future where he and Petty could work together, sharing the load, and learning from one another. And so in 2019, Christie-Johnston and Petty merged their teams, combining Christie-Johnston’s Bennelong SwissWellness and Petty’s Mobius-BridgeLane teams into a new outfit, under the title sponsorship of investment firm BridgeLane.
A few years later, busy with his own business interests, Petty stepped away from BridgeLane, and Christie-Johnston “just threw myself straight back into it”. But he told Kahlbetzer at the time that he could only commit short-term. He couldn’t keep working on the team so extensively, while also trying to run his Praties restaurant business in Tasmania, and spend as much time with his family as he wanted.
“I’d need to be able to find some additional funding to be able to get some more full-time staff involved into it, or it’s just not sustainable,” he said of that time. “And we’ve been searching constantly, as you always do. But you search and you try to grow what you’ve got, but it’s really hard to hold on to what you’ve got, especially with the economic conditions around the world.”
Christie-Johnston says that running a domestic team in Australia has “been a struggle for a long period of time,” making particular mention of the instability of the local racing scene.
“I don’t think any teams would say that we’re blessed with the amount of racing,” he said. “It’s just not there. So to develop riders you’ve got to take them around the world and things are expensive.
“We can see the cost of living in Australia is expensive but ultimately travel is far more than the increase in cost of living. Flights are maybe 30 or 40% more than what they used to be, accommodation in Europe, fuel. So you need to grow your budgets just to sustain what you’ve got, let alone increase the staffing level to sustain it. So it’s been challenging. It has been for a long period of time.”
Few people in Australian cycling have seen more change throughout their time in the sport than Christie-Johnston. In 25 years he’s seen the rise and fall of many teams, many races, and many cycling organisations. Just last week, BridgeLane’s main National Road Series rival, ARA-Skip Capital, announced it was closing its main teams and instead becoming a juniors-only team, due at least in part to “economic pressures”.
Like many, Christie-Johnston is not terribly positive about the current state of Australian domestic road racing.
“Yeah, look, it’s not great,” he said. “If I reflect [on] when I first got in and where it was at, you always hope that [by] the time you step out that there’s heaps of teams, heaps of racing going on, and the sport’s in a better place. But I don’t feel that. I feel that there’s less teams than ever, there’s less racing than ever, and that’s disappointing. So I think it is struggling.”
He is excited by the advent of the ProVelo Super League, though. Created by former pro and ARA-Skip Capital founder Matt Wilson, and backed by the eternally generous Gerry Ryan, the PSL will replace Australia’s National Road Series from 2025. Christie-Johnston’s women’s team will be there – “we’re 100% behind this change,” he says – and hopes that the series will be the boost for Aussie racing that Wilson plans for it to be.
“I hope that it’s super successful,” Christie-Johnston said. “And I was only just speaking to Matt yesterday about it, and it’s just really bad timing [with the BridgeLane men’s team closing – ed.], because he’s going ‘Ah, geez, it would have been great to be able to support it a bit longer …’ And I just said to Matt that I want to still be a part of it for the 12 months, it just needs to be a part of it for the women’s side, because it’s sustainable for the moment.”
With the men’s BridgeLane team closing down, Christie-Johnston plans to invest plenty of his time and energy into the BridgeLane women’s team.
“Pat [Shaw] is the manager of the women’s team, but his main role really is the team’s race director,” he explained. “I’ve sort of done all the background stuff still. So all the organising of trips and flights and everything like that for both teams. So I intend to support that and our goal is to grow that, and I think that with it being smaller and more manageable for the moment, having 100% focus on that will be certainly more sustainable and achievable.”
BridgeLane will continue to support the women’s team in 2025 but not as a headline sponsor. “I very much appreciate that [BridgeLane’s continued contribution], because without Markus’ support, the women’s team would have struggled too,” Christie-Johnston said.
Christie-Johnston said he doesn’t know what the team will be called next year, saying that it might even just have “a random name. Something maybe clever to sort of say to people that, if you want to join us in providing these young athletes opportunities, then here’s the space, and let’s do it,” he added. “Let’s have those conversations.”
In reflecting on those who have supported the women’s team to this point, Christie-Johnston paid tribute to a silent backer who has helped fund the women’s team since the start.
“Without her the women’s team would not have been at the level it has been and also without her continued support in 2025 it too would have not existed,” Christie-Johnston said. “She is a very special lady indeed. She comes to so many of our races and joins the team as often as she can. We have been blessed with her continued support.”
In both of its first two seasons, the BridgeLane women’s team has travelled to Europe to give its riders a taste of higher-level racing. Christie-Johnston hopes that will continue in 2025, assuming the budget allows. “We would look at any races around the world that will help the development of our riders, within our budget,” he said.
Ultimately, Christie-Johnston would love to see the women’s team grow beyond the Continental team it currently is. He long held the same hope for his men’s team, but was ultimately never able to attract the several million dollars of sponsorship necessary to make that happen.
“You strive for the best, and the best for me has always been to see the ladies get to the highest level, see the men get to the highest level,” he said. “But if we can provide that highest level internally for them, then great, because it does mean you’ve got the money to staff and have a better organisation. And I think that you can just support more riders.”
While Christie-Johnston won’t run a men’s team in 2025, he hasn’t ruled out the team’s return at some point in the years to come.
“It’s heaps of fun and, for me, every time you see a rider take that next step, and then [they’re] competing on the world scene, it’s fantastic,” he said. “And I suppose for me, I just need 12 months maybe, to take a back seat from the men’s side of it, and then just have a look whether I want to get back into it and how best to tackle this new landscape, because it is very different.
“We’re a Continental team. We’ve always been about just building up the talent in Australia and giving them an opportunity to hopefully get to the WorldTour. But even that landscape’s changed. WorldTour teams now have their own development teams. So where is the place for a Continental team that’s not in Europe?
“Because you’re spending a lot of money going across there and fighting for starts against development teams. Maybe there isn’t a place at the moment with what the UCI has allowed for Continental teams. It’s definitely dying. And I know there’s a lot of Continental teams struggling around the world, because ultimately we are the least-funded.
“Maybe we don’t need to be Continental anymore. Maybe we just try and push [riders] to these devo teams.”
Christie-Johnston is hoping that, by stepping back from running a men’s team, he’ll get to spend more time riding his bike next year, and more time with his family. He said he couldn’t have done what he has over the last 25 years without the support of his wife Tracey.
“She has allowed me to follow my passion and support of cycling,” Christie-Johnston said. “Without her support over these many years, the team would not have existed and to be honest, the cyclists that have come through this team really can be thankful that I have had Tracey’s support. She really is the unsung hero of this team.”
While, on paper, Christie-Johnston is taking a step back from team management in 2025, running one team rather than two, it’s clear he’s still going to be plenty busy. He’ll continue giving his all to his women’s team, doing what he’s done for more than 25 years now: working long, hard hours, largely behind the scenes, all with the goal of trying to help others get the best out of themselves.
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