MTN-Qhubeka's recent success at the Tour de France has catapulted Africa cycling into the limelight. The 'David and Goliath' exploits of African riders have showcased the continent's potential as a source of top-level athletes. In addition, their attacking style has thrilled fans and won them respect within and outside the European peloton. This is perhaps best exemplified by Eritrean rider Daniel Teklehaimanot, the outright winner of the 'Mountains Classification' at the Critérium du Dauphiné and holder of the 'mountains jersey' for the first week of the Tour de France. African cycling's success is unquestionably underpinned by the w ...> Read the whole story | 8 comments | shown 7907x
The 2014 cycling season has now come to an end and while the African MTN-Qhubeka team is about to start preparing the 2015 season with a training camp from 23-30 November at the Spier Wine Farm in the Western Cape of South Africa, we felt it would be good to get back on how the team performed in its first Grand Tour, the Vuelta a España 2014.
With a new UCI Pro Continental Team licence for the team, for the 3rd year in a row, the African team is hoping to participate in the Tour de France this year and the invitation for the Tour of Qatar and for the Tour of Oman by A.S.O. (the same organisor as the Tour) might be a good start towards this goal.
In professional cycling the winter training camp is the only time of year when all the riders are together in the same place. This provides a unique opportunity to train with all the teammates, build relationships and team cohesion, get to know new staff and plan for the coming race season.
Like most teams, MTN-Qhubeka did two training camps this winter, one in December 2013 and one in January of this year. This article gives you a behind the scenes look of these two winter camps .. which are not just about training!
Rob Child, of the Elite Sport Group (ESG), is the African team's nutritional biochemist and is often involved in the team's activities. As explained in the 2013 flashback article, Rob kindly accepted to provide Velowire's readers a look behind the scenes of this remarkable ...
2013 has now come to an end and 2014 has already started a few days ago. During the 2013 cycling season, the African MTN-Qhubeka team stepped up a level in the cycling hierarchy by becoming a Pro Continental team (since 2008 it had been present in the cycling peloton as a Continental team and was thus a little bit less visible in the different UCI races than in 2013).
Rob Child, of the Elite Sport Group (ESG), is the African team's nutritional biochemist and is often involved in the team's activities. Rob kindly accepted to provide Velowire's readers a look behind the scenes of this remarkable team through different stories to come throughout the year.
Thanks to Rob's contributions we will be able to discover how MTN-Qhubeka works towards its goal to participate in the Giro d'Italia in 2014 and onwards to the ...
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by Thomas Vergouwen on