A new cycling team takes to the road next season - and a rider well known locally will be its "directeur sportif."

He is Salisbury RC's Harry Lodge, an Italian-based professional who drew down the curtain on his racing career at the end of this season after 20 years active participation.

Team Endurasport is the name he has given to this new venture, and its co-sponsors will include BML Printing of Romsey and Roflex Move of Salisbury - a company that supported Lodge in his last season.

Speaking from his present home in Italy, 35-year-old Lodge announced that at least one Hampshire rider, Neil Coleman, will race for Endurasport next year.

A member of VC St Raphael Waite Contracts for the past two seasons, Coleman is reigning South District 25-mile time trial champion and fifth overall in the South division road racing league.

He is expected to form part of his new team's development squad which will compete in Premier Calendar events and other major races in this country with occasional engagements abroad. More senior members, registered as a Division 3 outfit by the UCI, will compete in overseas races, with some of the lesser known events in Italy already earmarked during 2003.

Another cyclist with strong Italian connections - she has just signed a two-year contract to race for Acca Due O - was in Southampton on Thursday, paying her last respects to Geoff Greenfield, the 76-year-old cycling guru who was buried at Holy Trinity Church, Woolston.

Nicole Cooke, the only Welsh competitor to strike gold when she won the women's road race at this year's Commonwealth Games, was one of many cyclists in a congregation of over 100 whose cycling successes were achieved after attending one of many training courses Greenfield organised during a lifetime's service to the sport.

Representatives of the British Cycling Federation, including several cyclo-cross officials and the national school's cycling association - two organisations whose activities received wholehearted support from Greenfield since their formations - and clubs throughout the area were present.

By coincidence, it is the turn of Greenfield's Crabwood CC to stage this Sunday's meeting for the Wessex League. All the leading riders in the league are expected with the exception of Peter Hargroves, called up for international duty as chief mechanic for the British team at a World Cup meeting in Germany.