Maybe you remember the 21st team of the Tour de France which discoverede the Tour last year? That was the Team Vittel which was new in the Tour but still had the idea to win it.
This year the Team Vittel will again be in the Tour de France 2009, still with the same goal (to win the Tour) and - just like any big professional cycling team - the team will open its web site which is presented as a blog for the Tour de France 2009!
The Team Vittel
You cheered on them massively last year on the side of the road and you have elected it as one of your favorite teams ...
After the big success in 2008, the Team Vittel will be back this year!!
On Wednesday morning, the Caisse d'Epargne cycling team was presented to the press at the Caisse Nationale des Caisses d'Epargne head office.
With 4 young new riders, the team clearly bets on rejuvenation!
The guests of honour
Still suffering from a bronchits, Daniel Mangeas, presented - just like Tuesday with the AG2R La Mondiale team - this team as well. He started by welcoming the guests of honour in the room:
- Jean Pitalier, the president of the Fédération Française de Cyclisme (French cycling federation)
- Alain Prost, the famous Formula 1 pilot who acts as a patron of the team in 2009
- Julie Krasniak, the female young mountain bike rider who's sponsored by the Caisse d'Epargne Lorraine Champagne-Ardenne
This morning the official presentation of the AG2R La Mondiale cycling team for 2009 took place at the head office of the insurance company with the same name. Still with 30 riders, of whom 7 new, and with 11 nationalities, a very polyvalent team was presented to the press. I was one of the happy few being able to assist to the presentation and in this article you'll be able to discover all the details!
The presentation
As usual for the French teams, the voice of the Tour, Daniel Mangeas, was the voice of the presentation. Suffering from a bronchitis treated with antibiotics, he was still able to show that he knows the riders very well and to provide a short personal story about all of them.
First of all Daniel Mangeas welcomed everyone in the room before handing over the microphone to André Renaudin, AG2R La Mondiale's General Director and a big fan of cycling himself. Mister Renaudin welcome the press and photographers but also especially the other sp ...> Read the whole story | no comments | shown 27216x
During its training camp in the south-east of Portugal the brand new cycling team Cervélo TestTeam presented itself to the press.
For the first time since years a bike supplier has become the main sponsor of a cycling team and that team manages to get the winner of the last Tour de France in its list of riders right from the start!
The Cervélo brand
Cervélo Cycles was founded in 1995 by two engineers, Phil White and Gérard Vroomen. Vroomen studied at the same university as I did, the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven where he studied Mechanical engineering. He did his graduation internship at the University of Montréal in Canada where, together with another student, Phil White, he developed the first prototype of a special time trial bike, the Baracchi. This bike was developed for an Italian cyclist who asked Gérard Vroomen to develop such a bike since the bike sponsor of the team hadn't b ...> Read the whole story | 7 comments | shown 8441x
Since a few days the Caisse d'Epargne cycling team website has disappeared ... but that's only so it can come back in a much better form soon!
Indeed, on 28 January - a few days after the Tour Down Under (and the day after the 2009 team presentation for AG2R La Mondiale) - the Caisse d'Epargne cycling team will not only present the new team for 2009 but also its completely revised web site. And that is what Alejandro Valverde himself announces on the Caisse d'Epargne web site ... not in translated Spanish but ... in French!!
It's the time of the year again in which the cycling teams for the new season 2009 get presented ... That is because the presentations are planned just before or just after the Tour Down Under (18 till 25 January) now it's part of the UCI ProTour.
Just like Rabobank with its pure combativity last Monday, the Milram cycling team also presented itself on Wednesday 7 January with a slogan: everything new, everything different!
Everything new, everything different
And indeed the only German cycling team which is left (at ProTour level) -after the disappearance of Gerolsteiner and the transfer of T-Mobile which has become High Road and than Columbia to the United States- indeed has a lot of new and different things in 2009!
Everything new
... to start with the riders: many riders have left and no less than 14 new riders arrived.
On Monday 5 January 2009 the Rabobank cycling team for 2009 has been presented. Exactly one year after the team presentation for 2008 the goals were more realistic than in 2008 when the team wanted to become the best sports team in the world.
In 2009 it's all about pure combativity ...
In Ahoy in Rotterdam, where the Tour de France 2010 will start, general manager Harold Knebel said he was happy with the results of 2008 but saw some room for improvement: It was good, but it could have been better. I think that with more combativity we can even better reach our goals.
The team's direction therefore expects its directeurs sportifs and riders in 2009 to show more initiative, aggressive riding and a recognisable strategy. ...
Bjarne Riis' team (Riis Cycling) for 2009, in 2008 known under the name CSC and since the Tour de France 2008 as CSC Saxo Bank, has today been presented in Vedbaek in Denmark.
This should have been a nice day where the team would have been presented under the new name Saxo Bank - IT Factory. But in the end that was not really the case ...
CSC had announced it wanted to stop its sponsoring at the end of 2008 after having supported the team since 2001. Just before the Tour de France, a new sponsor was found in the international investment bank Saxo Bank. A few months later (at the end of September during the World Championships Cyling in Varese) a second sponsor had been announced which would complete the team's budget. This second sponsor was the software supplier IT Factory (read the press release in which ...