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Team Manager, Thomas Campana speaks ahead of the 2016 season Happy new year to everyone. We are very excited about 2016 and welcome Cervélo to the team as a title sponsor. Cervélo Bigla Pro Cycling have wonderful partners on board and we are really excited about our team roster. We have nine riders for this season, down from 14 the previous year. We reduced the roster as it is an Olympic year. We have a good chance of having two thirds of our roster going to the Olympics so we’ve had to adapt to such an important event. The Olympic games are still very important to women’s cycling. Men’s cycling has the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia but for women, the Olympics is a big event bringing added coverage that women’s cycling doesn’t get every season. We have 5 – 6 athletes with a good possibility of being selected for the games. We’ve adapted the program and the group to the event. We’ve added two new riders in Stephanie Pohl and Gabrielle Pilote Fortin. Stephanie is a world champion on the track and Gabrielle is the Canadian under 23 road champion. We’ve kept a good balance in the team with a mix of experience and really good young talent. On paper the team might not look as strong as last year but I believe the team will be stronger. Unfortunately, we had an early set back when the organisers of the Tour of Qatar didn’t accept our application to the race even though we were ranked fifth in the world at the time of issuing invites. For Stephanie and for Lisa Klein, the event would have been the last preparation before the track world championships. That’s just an example of how these decision affect the riders but more importantly, it has a major effect on sponsors. It’s a delicate situation and causes problems for our sponsors. Sponsors sign up to get coverage in certain parts of the world. In terms of Qatar, we can see that the UCI rules aren’t working. There’s a lot of loopholes within in the rules and race organisers can interrupt them they way they want. If UCI and ASO doesn’t understand how decisions like this can effect title sponsorship of a team, then they don’t understand how to grow the sport. Teams need guarantees of a race program in order to approach sponsors. This result has motivated the girls to show what they’re made of. We’re in preparation for our training camp and everyone is excited about it. We’ve had a great response from the other race organisers so we’re very much looking forward to a great Spring campaign. Thomas Campana |
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