Dekker_Tifosi said:
Funny both Kwiatkowski and Ruben Fernandez were not that brilliant at Caja Rujal. But a blast at WT teams.
Is Caja Rujal that bad?
JRanton said:
Probably. Their budget is tiny I'd imagine so they can't provide much support for the riders beyond paying their wages.
When Kwiat was at Caja Rural it was only Continental level and was almost a feeder for Abarcá. That was part of the reason he was there. The story went that Unzué had everything in place to get him, but that was the year Caisse were pulling out and they couldn't offer him guarantees as they were still negotiating with Telefonica, and so when he was given a better offer, off he went, and never looked back. He was also 19 at Caja Rural, though he was in the breakaway a lot in Spanish small stage races that year, I especially remember the queen stage of Castilla y León.
The ProContinental Caja Rural is a low budget operation alright, and rider development, while not necessarily poor for a ProContinental team that doesn't see itself as a development team, and especially with the paucity of race days that the current Spanish calendar allows for, will certainly not be anything special. Fernández was pretty good in the first half of the Volta a Portugal last year, though he and the whole Caja Rural team imploded and cracked like an egg before Torre. I don't think he's a can't-miss talent, and this is an early season opportunity to get noticed, so to speak. Remember Unzué likes to bring people through slowly, too.