Cycling: Rotorua’s Craig Geater awarded rare honour at Tour de France

Craig Geater receives his Loyalty Award for his 20 years spent working on the Tour de France. Photo / SWPix

Rotorua’s Craig Geater received a rare honour at the start of the penultimate stage of the Tour de France.

Cycling New Zealand’s high-performance road campaign manager was one of six team staff awarded the Loyalty Trophy for 20 years of service at the Tour de France, presented at the start at Moirans-en-Montagne on Monday by tour stage designer Thierry Gouvenou, Cycling NZ said in a media release.

Geater is currently head mechanic for Team Jayco Alula, which has been his “day job” for more than two decades since he first ventured to Europe as a keen cyclist.

In 1999, he was staying with good friend Scott Guyton, a Kiwi riding for the Linda McCartney Racing team, who is now the supremo of the Bolton Equities Black Spoke professional team.

Their mechanic fell ill and Geater stepped in, impressing sufficiently to secure an offer for fulltime employment by former cycling star and then-general manager, Sean Yates.

When the team folded the following year, Geater was offered a job with the Australian national team based in Italy, before being lured away with a two-year contract with crack pro team CSC, which had great riders such as Laurent Jalabert, Bo Hemberger, Tyler Hamilton, Jens Voight and the Schleck brothers.

Geater promised the Australians that should they start a pro team, he would return to work for them.

He worked on his first Tour de France in 2001 with CSC before moving with Yates to the Discovery Channel team for two years with Alberto Contador and Lance Armstrong, and then on to the Radio Shack, which morphed from that operation. He held the head mechanic role and was a personal mechanic for Armstrong.

Things came full circle when the former Australian national boss, Shayne Bannan, called to say that they were starting a professional World Tour team, and true to his word, Geater joined GreenEdge as head mechanic.

He has been at the organisation since, based in Belgium, but travelling throughout Europe, with more than 200 race days per year. As well as the preparation duties, Geater is in the team car and the man who is first to any stricken rider needing assistance during the race.

His experiences, especially working alongside some of the sport’s greatest riders and successful team bosses, have given him the unique skill set to step into the role of campaign manager and director for the Cycling New Zealand road teams at the Commonwealth and Olympic Games world championships in recent years.

Such is his status in the sport, he has been able to entice some of his closest professional allies to assist the New Zealand teams, and they will join again in Scotland next month for the world championships.