Transfers and Rumours 2017 > 2018

[May0maniac]

Padun is turning pro with Bahrain.
http://www.cicloweb.it/2017/10/30/bahrain-merida-mark-padun/
And the great Dani Diaz just went back to Argentina and signed a contract with SEP San Juan, so you already know who'll dominate the 2018 Vuelta a San Juan.
http://www.cicloweb.it/2017/10/30/argentino-daniel-diaz-firma-con-sep-san-juan/
He says that he had offers from Spain and Portugal, but he returned back home because of family reasons (he could make a decent amount of money in Portugal, so I believe him).

 

[Anderis]

I don't think Paterski has WT level anymore. He had a great year with CCC (think it was 2015) but was unable to replicate that kind of form on the following years. This year he was quite dominant in Polish races but subpar on international races. He would be a good addition to some italians PCT teams (Willier/Nippo).

2015 wasn't Paterski's only good year. In 2016 he finished 6th Bretagne Classic (WT race) and in 2014 he won Tour of Norway. 2017 was a bit weaker but he still finished 16th in that WT one-day race in Germany. I think he would be a better domestique than many riders who are already in WT and if he could prove that 2017 was a one-off worse year and come back to his 2014-2016 form he would even earn some leadership opportunities. If I were short of riders of this type available to sign, I would give him a chance.

 

[MADRAZO]

Michael Carbel confirmed to have signed a 1 year contract with Fortuneo.

 

[el chava]

Kim Magnusson to EF Education. That's a surprise even if it is originally a swedish sponsor.

 

[Anderis]

Looks like one of those signings made for commercial reasons rather than sporting reasons. I see nothing in his results to suggest that he is a WT material. He won Swedish Championship but the opposition he beat was not very strong and he didn't have results in other races to back this up.

I didn't expect EF to force any Swedish riders.

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Re:

Looks like one of those signings made for commercial reasons rather than sporting reasons. I see nothing in his results to suggest that he is a WT material. He won Swedish Championship but the opposition he beat was not very strong and he didn't have results in other races to back this up.

I didn't expect EF to force any Swedish riders.

Even if they really wanted a Swedish rider for commercial reasons, he seems like a peculiar choice. I'd have been surprised by a PCT team giving a 25 year old with so few results on the Conti circuit a contract.

 

[Anderis]

Maybe it's the Swedish Champion jersey that carries additional commercial value.

Vaughters was once a team-mate with Magnusson's father. Maybe personal connections also played a role.

 

[yaco]

Re:

Maybe it's the Swedish Champion jersey that carries additional commercial value.

Vaughters was once a team-mate with Magnusson's father. Maybe personal connections also played a role.

You nailed it.

 

[mariposa]

Arroyo goes to Portugal to Efapel for 2018.

 

[ciranda]

Maybe Magnusson is not an obvious supertalent but it's nice that someone from Sweden get an opportunity for once.

Meanwhile an abbreviated list of native english speakers who only have a professional contract because of nationality: Frame, Oien, McLay, Jones, Monk, Scully, William Clarke, Bevan, Canty, Owan, Chris Hamilton, Craven, Dougall, Smit, Earle, Archibold, Docker, Meyer, Morton + at least ten guys from Aquablue.

 

[Netserk]

McLay, really?

 

[MatParker117]

Lot of world champions in that list.

 

[Bye Bye Bicycle]

The whole list is a joke (incl. the names spelled wrong).

 

[GenericBoonenFan]

I don't know where else to post it but w/e
I've read a interesting article about Tartelleto-Isorex, a CT team from Belgium taht aims to become PCT in 2019 and ride the Tour in 2025.
Here's the link and my translation.
http://wielerverhaal.com/2017/11/belgische-continentale-taartjesploeg-wil-tour-de-france-rijden/

Belgium pie-team aiming for a tour de france participation!

Tartelleto-Isorex is extremely ambitious, the 2018 team will built further on past results and with the signing of former Marlux-Napoleon Games DS Danny de Bie they want to grow to PCT-level ! “We want to ride the Tour de France in 2025,” says Teammanager Peter Bauwens.

Danny De Bie is in charge of signing new talent and bringing the riders of the male and female team to a higher level. He already scouted young talent for the team before. “It’s more than that”, says Peter Bauwens, “because we want to level the CycloX team with the road cycling team”. “But we will have to do it slowly, however if MVP and WvA switch to the road scene this will mean that there will be more riders at the top in the field, only then we will sign someone capable of riding top 5, because currently the nr.5 isn’t featured in the TV coverage and that’s not what sponsors want”, concludes Bauwens.

Rob Ruijgh

Many teams struggle to secure sponsorship but not Tarteletto-Isorex. “I’m taking good care of my sponsors, I inform them about every step I take and I try to highlight them as much as possible”, says a proud Peter Bouwens. “I’ve been with this team for 15 years and I’ve never seen a sponsor leave, on the contrary, we keep signing deals with new ones. And I need them, because without them my plans would be impossible,” He concludes.
And they have a lot of them (sponsors). “We had a good year we can build on”, says Bauwens, “Look at Rob Ruijgh and his overall victory in the tour of Iran (Azerbaijan).” But Rob is not the only one riding on a high level, everybody is doing great. And Peter Bauwens is very happy with his team. They added riders and want to take part in more races, show the jersey to a larger public and possibly some televised races. “The tour of Liège and the tour of Namur are very fun, but they don’t have a big commercial value”, says Bauwens, “we have to show what we offer!”

The Tour

From a sportive viewpoint the Pie-team wants to ride the Tour in 2025 and therefore they want to grow to PCT level in 2 years’ time. “We want to become the best continental team in the next years in Belgium and we want to build on that. When you want to participate in certain races you have to show results. Perhaps we will add new names and some will have to disappear. Sadly, that’s cycling,” according to Bauwens. (…)
The goal: TdF 2025
“I don’t wanna jump my horse but in 2025 we want to take part in the Tour, we have to dream”, says an ambitious Bauwens, “I don’t fear the current economic situation, I’ve always had the money I wanted and needed. Ofcourse, that’s easy with the spectacular riders I have! Once we go PCT we will have to add additional budget –about 3.5 million euros- but we have time. And we already have a nice budget equal to a nice villa. Not many of our level have this wealth.”

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Maybe Magnusson is not an obvious supertalent but it's nice that someone from Sweden get an opportunity for once.

Meanwhile an abbreviated list of native english speakers who only have a professional contract because of nationality: Frame, Oien, McLay, Jones, Monk, Scully, William Clarke, Bevan, Canty, Owan, Chris Hamilton, Craven, Dougall, Smit, Earle, Archibold, Docker, Meyer, Morton + at least ten guys from Aquablue.

One of the stupidest posts ever written on this forum. Quite an achievement, given some of the competition.

 

[greenedge]

Maybe Magnusson is not an obvious supertalent but it's nice that someone from Sweden get an opportunity for once.

Meanwhile an abbreviated list of native english speakers who only have a professional contract because of nationality: Frame, Oien, McLay, Jones, Monk, Scully, William Clarke, Bevan, Canty, Owan, Chris Hamilton, Craven, Dougall, Smit, Earle, Archibold, Docker, Meyer, Morton + at least ten guys from Aquablue.

Ahlstrand and F.Ludvigisson had good opportunities but were probabaly only given contracts for leading out Kittel, Degenkolb etc. Wetterhall should have been offered a renewed contract with Net-App (Bora now) after his Ronde Van Drenthe victory so I agree with you there. Hopefully their young riders can soon step up.

From the list above:
-Monk doesn't have a contract for next year (as of so far) but he's still young so seems like a good rider to bet on.
-Bevin has been a pretty good rider, I'm not going to defend him as it's pretty evident he has talent.
-Will Clarke disappointed this year but if he was PC he'd be good for a win or two each year.
-Canty still has room to grow and is similar to Clarke.
-Owen is a talent who's great bikehandling skills, youth and sprint speed should see him have a long career.
-Chris Hamilton may not be as talented as Lucas Hamilton, Storer or Hindley but he does seem strong and it was impressive he finished his first GT this year.
-Archibold would be a good leadout man for any rider.
-Meyer has a lot of talent and can still be a very succesful rider.
-Hopefully Morton in this year can continue to improve.

 

[42x16ss]

Maybe Magnusson is not an obvious supertalent but it's nice that someone from Sweden get an opportunity for once.

Meanwhile an abbreviated list of native english speakers who only have a professional contract because of nationality: Frame, Oien, McLay, Jones, Monk, Scully, William Clarke, Bevan, Canty, Owan, Chris Hamilton, Craven, Dougall, Smit, Earle, Archibold, Docker, Meyer, Morton + at least ten guys from Aquablue.

:lol:

Some seriously good riders on that list...

 

[hmpower]

That is abit rough on old Shane Archbold! https://cyclingtips.com/2017/10/shane-archbolds-agonising-year-definitely-stopped-time/

 

[hmpower]

Think find Thomas Scully won a stage last year and Partick Bevan has done quiet well in some pretty good stage races

 

[Anderis]

Maybe Magnusson is not an obvious supertalent but it's nice that someone from Sweden get an opportunity for once.

Meanwhile an abbreviated list of native english speakers who only have a professional contract because of nationality: Frame, Oien, McLay, Jones, Monk, Scully, William Clarke, Bevan, Canty, Owan, Chris Hamilton, Craven, Dougall, Smit, Earle, Archibold, Docker, Meyer, Morton + at least ten guys from Aquablue.

You forgot Cavandish, Froome and Daniel Mertin.

 

[ciranda]

The question is how many of those would have received offers from teams in the first place if not for nationality. Think hard about it. Is it difficult to find guys with qualities like Archibold or Docker or neopros with results like Frame or Owen? Answer is no. Results in asian races or track cycling still don’t mean nothing. Posters are outraged about Magnusson and last year Brajkovic and simultaneously blind to how crazy privileged it is to be AUSGBRNZLSAFUS.

Witness the usual late season practice to grip-any-english-speaking-rider-no-matter-what of teams like Cannondale or Dimension Data. Even guys like Blythe or Brammeier are guaranteed deals forever through this.

Sorry for the spelling mistakes, it’s not like there have been occasions to type these names re cycling competitions.

Maybe Magnusson is not an obvious supertalent but it's nice that someone from Sweden get an opportunity for once.

Meanwhile an abbreviated list of native english speakers who only have a professional contract because of nationality: Frame, Oien, McLay, Jones, Monk, Scully, William Clarke, Bevan, Canty, Owan, Chris Hamilton, Craven, Dougall, Smit, Earle, Archibold, Docker, Meyer, Morton + at least ten guys from Aquablue.

One of the stupidest posts ever written on this forum. Quite an achievement, given some of the competition.

Thanks Zinoviev!

 

[Ricco']

The question is how many of those would have received offers from teams in the first place if not for nationality. Think hard about it. Is it difficult to find guys with qualities like Archibold or Docker or neopros with results like Frame or Owen? Answer is no. Results in asian races or track cycling still don’t mean nothing. Posters are outraged about Magnusson and last year Brajkovic and simultaneously blind to how crazy privileged it is to be AUSGBRNZLSAFUS.

Witness the usual late season practice to grip-any-english-speaking-rider-no-matter-what of teams like Cannondale or Dimension Data. Even guys like Blythe or Brammeier are guaranteed deals forever through this.

Sorry for the spelling mistakes, it’s not like there have been occasions to type these names re cycling competitions.

Maybe Magnusson is not an obvious supertalent but it's nice that someone from Sweden get an opportunity for once.

Meanwhile an abbreviated list of native english speakers who only have a professional contract because of nationality: Frame, Oien, McLay, Jones, Monk, Scully, William Clarke, Bevan, Canty, Owan, Chris Hamilton, Craven, Dougall, Smit, Earle, Archibold, Docker, Meyer, Morton + at least ten guys from Aquablue.

One of the stupidest posts ever written on this forum. Quite an achievement, given some of the competition.

Thanks Zinoviev!

Why is it different from guys like Bono, Zurlo, Bernaudeau, Frison, Coledan, etc?

It's only normal that the sponsors want riders from their countries or from the biggest and richest markets they can reach (like the anglophones).

If you have more and more anglo money and sponsors, it's only normal that the number of anglo riders increase too. 15 years ago we had a lot of italian teams and accordingly a high number of italian riders too at the top tiers.

 

[Anderis]

Logan Owen won LBL U-23. It's laughable to suggest he didn't earn a chance on sporting criteria.

McLay has been Fortuneo's best rider in the past 2 years. I really stopped to treat it seriously when I saw him on the list.

Docker finished in the top10 in a WT race this year. Something many French, Italian or Kazakh WT riders would never achieve.

Most of the anglophone riders mentioned are way better than guys like Artyom Zakharov, Ji Cheng and at least equally good as Jorge Arcas.

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Re: Transfers and Rumours 2017 > 201

The question is how many of those would have received offers from teams in the first place if not for nationality. Think hard about it. Is it difficult to find guys with qualities like Archibold or Docker or neopros with results like Frame or Owen? Answer is no. Results in asian races or track cycling still don’t mean nothing. Posters are outraged about Magnusson and last year Brajkovic and simultaneously blind to how crazy privileged it is to be AUSGBRNZLSAFUS.

Witness the usual late season practice to grip-any-english-speaking-rider-no-matter-what of teams like Cannondale or Dimension Data. Even guys like Blythe or Brammeier are guaranteed deals forever through this.

Sorry for the spelling mistakes, it’s not like there have been occasions to type these names re cycling competitions.

Maybe Magnusson is not an obvious supertalent but it's nice that someone from Sweden get an opportunity for once.

Meanwhile an abbreviated list of native english speakers who only have a professional contract because of nationality: Frame, Oien, McLay, Jones, Monk, Scully, William Clarke, Bevan, Canty, Owan, Chris Hamilton, Craven, Dougall, Smit, Earle, Archibold, Docker, Meyer, Morton + at least ten guys from Aquablue.

One of the stupidest posts ever written on this forum. Quite an achievement, given some of the competition.

Thanks Zinoviev!

It's quite frustrating to watch someone who correctly understands that nationality plays a role in contract offers veer wildly off course into nonsense about "anglophones". There is no advantage to being a New Zealander or a Namibian[!] in getting a pro contract, to use some of the more bizarre examples in your list. There is however an advantage in coming from a country where pro teams or major sponsors are based.

That's a club that four anglophone countries belong to, so their riders do have an advantage over a Swede or a Czech. But in three of those countries, Australia, Britain and Ireland, there is only one pro team, so that advantage is relatively limited (I'd question whether there's any significant advantage for the Brits at all, given that their one pro team is so big budget it is rarely interested in marginal espoirs of any nationality). You can add South Africa to the same category if you want to rather dubiously categorise that country as "anglophone".

These countries belong to the same category as other countries with one pro team, like Poland, Israel or Kazakhstan. If you really had to distinguish between countries with one pro team in assessing how many marginal riders get a not entirely deserved contract, the anglophone examples tend to have slightly fewer local nobodies. But the really big advantage goes not to Brits or Israelis but to riders from countries with large numbers of pro teams and even more so countries with large numbers of PCT teams. That is to say Belgium, Italy and most of all France, with the USA and Spain closing up with them as more of their teams go PCT.

The list of "lucky anglophones" you include as evidence is simply bizarre. It includes riders who don't in fact have a pro contract, highly rated espoirs and good established pros. In a later post you throw in two more examples of riders who supposedly are guaranteed pro contracts forever because of their nationalities (Blythe and Brammeier) when in fact both of those riders have bounced around the divisions and have repeatedly failed to find pro contracts. Brammeier - a very competent but unspectacular career domestique - ending up at Synergy Baku for a season really isn't evidence that his nationality made him bulletproof.

You repeatedly single out Shane Archbold, which just suggests ignorance of the rider. He's a high level leadout man and the only reason why there was any doubt at all about him getting another pro contract was that he was injured for a season and a half. Singling out a McLay is even stronger. McLay is no world beater but he was the strongest or second strongest rider on Fortuneo for the last two years. If he doesn't deserve a pro contract what does that say about the other riders on that team? It's not McLay who was getting a ride on the basis of his nationality there, it was French riders on a French team who got a leg up. It really does take a weird sort of obsession with anglophones to look at that roster and think that McLay was the undeserving passenger.

Similarly with Aquablue. Their peers aren't WT teams, like the one giving Magnusson his lucky break. They are the other PCT teams. If you think that most of the squad of what was probably the third strongest PCT team this year are just lucky nobodies who got contracts for speaking English, what the hell do you think of the bottom half of the roster of all of the many weaker PCT teams? Did all those even less notable guys on Delko or Funvic or Gazprom or Manzana or CCC or WB Veranclassic get their jobs by being secret anglophones?

Nationality matters in cycling. But it's not about privileged anglophones versus the rest. It's about privileged riders from countries with pro teams, or better still multiple pro teams, versus the rest. You have fixated on anglophones, presumably because some anglophone countries have relatively recently moved from the second category into the first one. That's causing you to mss the bigger picture.

If you really want to get the most out of a structural advantage and are absolutely determined to have a pro cycling career despite not being quite good enough, you really should arrange to be born French. The French have both the largest number of teams and the teams with the strongest focus on developing local riders. It's certainly a better idea than being Namibian or Canadian or a Kiwi.

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Two telling details about Aquablue's attitude towards carrying passengers for nationality reasons: (1) in their year of existence they have offered contracts to precisely two Irish Conti riders, Dunbar and Dunne, both of whom were unquestionably good enough. They were not interested in bulking up their roster with Irish Conti guys who hadn't shown the level yet. (2) The one rider they brought in who probably did get a big leg up for being Irish was Martyn Irvine. He was one of very few available Irish guys with PCT experience and he has a bit of a media profile at home as a track World Champion. Note however that now that they have an Irish prospective leader in Dunbar and are generally a more established concern, Irvine is moving to a DS role despite having a year on his contract as a rider.

If they aren't willing to carry Irish riders who don't quite have the grade, it's frankly bizarre to think that they are at all interested in carrying extraneous Yanks or Brits or Kiwis. They are a PCT team, which inevitable means that they are taking a bit of a punt on a few riders who might not cut it. But they were in their first year arguably the most conservative team in the division in that regard. The most frequent criticism of them here in their early days wasn't that they had brought in riders who weren't good enough but instead that they had concentrated on bringing in decent journeymen, riders who were very much known quantities, who definitely had the level but probably weren't going to get much better.