Teams & Riders The Great Big Cycling Transfers, Extensions, and Rumours Thread

[Stilletto]

Israel resigns local lads....
Guy Niv
Guy Sagiv
Omer Goldstein
Itamar Goldstein
to assist Frroome for 2021 season

 

[Zoef-Lightning]

Circus Wanty Gobert is evolving into a fully fledged team, especially for the stage races. Not the absolute top riders, but strong in width. Zimmermann, Hirt and now Meintjes. The latter in particular is a potential top ten rider. And having Zimmermann, Hirt and Bakelants in support..... A pity is that Meurisse is leaving the team.

 

[tobydawq]

Israel resigns local lads....
Guy Niv
Guy Sagiv
Omer Goldstein
Itamar Goldstein
to assist Frroome for 2021 season

A train competitive with the one he had at Sky.

 

[tobydawq]

Circus Wanty Gobert is evolving into a fully fledged team, especially for the stage races. Not the absolute top riders, but strong in width. Zimmermann, Hirt and now Meintjes. The latter in particular is a potential top ten rider. And having Zimmermann, Hirt and Bakelants in support..... A pity is that Meurisse is leaving the team.

Still a very poor WorldTour Team. Alpecin are much better.

 

[luckyboy]

Circus and Qhubeka look like horrible teams lol. Good that they are saved but they both look a lot weaker than even Cofidis or Israel Startup Nation

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Israel resigns local lads....
Guy Niv
Guy Sagiv
Omer Goldstein
Itamar Goldstein
to assist Frroome for 2021 season

Are any of these guys remotely WT level?

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Circus and Qhubeka look like horrible teams lol. Good that they are saved but they both look a lot weaker than even Cofidis or Israel Startup Nation

The emergence of a group of bottom end WT teams, significantly lower in quality than anything we’ve recently been used to, is the corollary of the emergence of mega budget super teams at the top.

 

[BlueRoads]

Circus and Qhubeka look like horrible teams lol. Good that they are saved but they both look a lot weaker than even Cofidis or Israel Startup Nation

Well, there have to be weaker and stronger teams, and I suppose Circus has done well with
their riders and budget. If the structures in the team are good, maybe some riders like Zimmermann, Koch can improve.

 

[titan31]

Are any of these guys remotely WT level?

I assume Itamar Goldstein is Itamar Einhorn and hes a half decent sprinter tbf. Several top 10s over the last year, and he's only 23 so still has potential to improve. The others probably not but can't be much worse than some of the Kazakhs at Astana or the guy at UAE

 

[Landeirovic]

Lutsenko will sign in Uae

 

[Stilletto]

Lutsenko will sign in Uae

Both Lopez and Lutsenko hmmm i was under the impression that 1 stays...

 

[Alexandre B.]

Circus-Wanty, Cofidis and Qhubeka-Assos will ride three Grand Tours next year.

The absurdity of this big fat World Tour.

 

[tobydawq]

Are any of these guys remotely WT level?

Well, apart from Itamar Einhorn (not Goldstein, there's a mistake in the list), they have all been national champions. And that's in a country with several other WT riders

 

[BlueRoads]

Besides, these guys have the nicest names, no I don't mean the Guys, but Goldstein and Einhorn.

 

[42x16ss]

Circus and Qhubeka look like horrible teams lol. Good that they are saved but they both look a lot weaker than even Cofidis or Israel Startup Nation

Arkea and Alpecin are both stronger. Alpecin are still stronger without Van der Poel, and even Arkea may still be without Quintana

 

[Breh]

CWG is a pretty weak team, true. But it's their first year as a WT team, i'm willing to give them some time.

Team NTT/Dimension Data/Qhubeka have been terrible for a few years.

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Well, apart from Itamar Einhorn (not Goldstein, there's a mistake in the list), they have all been national champions. And that's in a country with several other WT riders

well yeah, but that’s only a guarantee of WT level in countries with so many WT riders that there will always be a number of them present and targeting the nationals. Ireland for example is somewhere between Israel and Denmark in terms of number of high quality pros and three of the last six national RR champs have never had a WT contract...

I don’t object to local randoms getting a chance. It’s normal enough that they do. I was just curious about whether we are ever going to hear these guys names at the sharp end of a race. Einhorn aside.

 

[SafeBet]

I think Wanty is doing a good job in the transfer department all things considered. They got some competent WT riders and a few specialists for the one day races they will mostly target. Yes, they are missing a poster guy but I'd give them a couple of years before calling them horrible.

 

[Stilletto]

I think Wanty is doing a good job in the transfer department all things considered. They got some competent WT riders and a few specialists for the one day races they will mostly target. Yes, they are missing a poster guy but I'd give them a couple of years before calling them horrible.

we all know why we are slating these teams for not being WT strong enough but surely is it not the bigger teams and the fact that there is no cap on how much rider budgets should be.
Teams like INEOS, JUMBO, Decuenick stockpiling GC contenders and the strongest talents, paying them the biggest wages and whispering sweet leadership words.

Imagine a Kruijswijk at Wanty, Alaphilipe at Cofidis, etc etc...

 

[BlueRoads]

we all know why we are slating these teams for not being WT strong enough but surely is it not the bigger teams and the fact that there is no cap on how much rider budgets should be.
Teams like INEOS, JUMBO, Decuenick stockpiling GC contenders and the strongest talents, paying them the biggest wages and whispering sweet leadership words.

Imagine a Kruijswijk at Wanty, Alaphilipe at Cofidis, etc etc...

Of course you are right on the one hand. Smaller teams cannot offer the same amount of money to domestiques, that's the major problem. If a very good rider goes to a team with no support and no plan b, he usually fails there. But then Quickstep for instance, as far as I know, does not have a really huge budget. I think Movistar does not have the worst budget, yet they did terribly this year - of course this was a very weird year and it's been a season of change for them.
I don't want to deny the heavy impact that the disparity of team budget has, but it's not like there is a direct and inevitable correlation between budget and performance. If you are a smaller team, you can still do good work. And if you offer younger guys a chance for learning experiences and leadership, you have a chance. If you have a relatively small budget and put it all into one or two older star riders, well, I think that's a very risky strategy, although the sponsors may like it at first. But the (new) Sunweb strategy is way better than CCC's or Israel's, I think.

 

[luckyboy]

Those two old British guys are kind of random for Eolo Kometa aren't they? Is that just Sean Yates getting to pick some riders or what

 

[Movitrain]

Lutsenko will sign in Uae

I wonder if you are an insider of some sort.
You didn't add a source and i can't find any source anywhere supporting this claim or even a far-fetched rumor.
I'm interested in Lutsenko as a rider so I was just a bit curious.

 

[Stilletto]

maybe the Prince of UAE ?

I wonder if you are an insider of some sort.
You didn't add a source and i can't find any source anywhere supporting this claim or even a far-fetched rumor.
I'm interested in Lutsenko as a rider so I was just a bit curious.

Maybe a member of the royal family

 

[craigmalone]

Of course you are right on the one hand. Smaller teams cannot offer the same amount of money to domestiques, that's the major problem. If a very good rider goes to a team with no support and no plan b, he usually fails there. But then Quickstep for instance, as far as I know, does not have a really huge budget. I think Movistar does not have the worst budget, yet they did terribly this year - of course this was a very weird year and it's been a season of change for them.
I don't want to deny the heavy impact that the disparity of team budget has, but it's not like there is a direct and inevitable correlation between budget and performance. If you are a smaller team, you can still do good work. And if you offer younger guys a chance for learning experiences and leadership, you have a chance. If you have a relatively small budget and put it all into one or two older star riders, well, I think that's a very risky strategy, although the sponsors may like it at first. But the (new) Sunweb strategy is way better than CCC's or Israel's, I think.

Kinda depends though, like Movistar are the Spanish team, so they'll always have an excellent chance of getting talented Spanish riders. For Belgium, Wanty will be competing for the riders that QS or Lotto don't want. Qhebaka are just fecked as they were fighting for a sponsor for so long, they've zero chance at fielding a competitive team imo. Best hope for them is they get the guys who are still FAs like Nizzolo, Cavendish (gives them media coverage at least). I can't imagine they'll have the money to chase a guy like Hart.

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Those two old British guys are kind of random for Eolo Kometa aren't they? Is that just Sean Yates getting to pick some riders or what

Very weird. Two 30 year olds with no particularly notable road racing results. Christian had two years as a pro with Aquablue when he was just about young enough to still be a guy who might make it and did basically nothing (he won the KoM in the Tour de Suisse). He hasn’t been particularly successful on the British circuit since. Archibald at least is a good TTist and hasn’t had a pro contract before, so maybe they think he can get a couple of wins in small races with TTs and can be a big engine workhorse. Even that’s a bit tenuous though. Usually if a team full of kids brings in a couple of 30 year olds without notable results, you’d at least expect them to be wise old heads who’ve been knocking around the pro peloton for years.

Coffee ride buddies of Yates seems as good a guess as any.