Next year Graeme Brown will ride for Drapac Professional Cycling. At 35 years of age and after 13 seasons as a professional, the last 9 at Rabobank/Blanco/Belkin, the Australian returns to his home country.

"After 13 years of racing in Europe I'm really excited to start a new chapter of my life with a new team," the two-time Olympic gold medallist said. "Coming back and racing in Australia for an Australian team is something that I've always wanted to do, and this opportunity has come up at the perfect time.

"As far as my role in the team goes I am really motivated to get really good a sprint train on track, and to help share the experience that I've picked up with these young riders.

"I've also been impressed by Michael's [Drapac, owner] philosophy of helping riders beyond their racing careers, with things like the transition program which looks at helping riders outside of their racing, " he said. "This is something that is unique to the team and I think is very important for a lot of riders to have access to."

"Graeme brings a wealth of experience to the team, which will be invaluable as we strive to build a squad that is focused on specific targets throughout the year where we believe we have the potential to mix it with the very best in the world," manager Jonathan Breekveldt said. "The team took seventeen wins this year, eight of which were taken by Wouter [Wippert] in sprints. We feel that by bringing in Graeme, and by improving the quality of our program we will be able to achieve a great deal more in 2015."

Brown made his debut with Panaria where he rode from 2002 to 2005 and since 2006 he has been with the same structure, first known as Rabobank and for the last two years as Belkin. He has nine victories in the Tour de Langkawi and three in the Tour Down Under on his palmares and has won stages in races like the Tour de Pologne, the Tour of California, the Tour of Austria and the Vuelta a Murcia.

Brown joins the other Drapac signings: Cameron Peterson, Martin Kohler (BMC), Dylan Girdlestone (stagiare Garmin-Sharp), Brenton Jones (Avanti), Peter Koning (Metec), Tim Roe (Budget Forkflits) and Sam Spokes (Etixx) while Jonathan Cantwell, William Clarke, Darren Lapthorne, Travis Meyer, Lachlan Norris, Bernard Sulzberger and Wouter Wippert will stay with the team.