This is where you will find the news about the pride of Finnish Cycling:
Valio - DeLaval - the most Bovine team in the world!
We now enter our third season, which will be our first season in the PCT.
Thus it will be another season where we will have to improve a good bit during the transfer season, but with last years experiences in the tank we are optimistic.
While our clear focus lies on Finland and Sweden both our sponsors and the team have a global outview and a soft spot for the smaller cycling nations around the globe.
Thus we will not rule anyone out based on their nationality, but if to choose between two similar riders we will look at their passports as will we when chosing which talnts to take onboard.
No matter what we have an exiting season ahead of us, where we hopefully will be able to build a team capable of surviving in the PCT.
Spoiler
Main Jersey
Finland RR: Matti Manninen
Finland ITT: Samuel Pökälä
Belarus RR+ITT: Branislav Samoilev
Mexico ITT: Bernardo Colex
Turkey ITT: Gökhan Hasta
United Arab Emirates RR: Essa Khalifa
Our main sponsor Valio shot a commercial featuring the late great Lemmy a month ago. Now turned tribute: https://t.co/jPbFFUP5vA
Below a look back at the history of the team in chronological order.
It features a small summary of the season, rankings summary of the team profiles (any rider named Rider of the Month that season), roster overviews as well as links to more information.
Head-banner provides link to the relevant HQ's.
Enjoy!
2014: Less than entertaining (CT)
We came into existance with high hopes back by Live Nation, who wanted an entertaining team to suit their brand. It should be built of riders from smaller cycling nations with Finland and Sweden as home nations.
We quickly lost out on all our leadership targets, except Chris Anker Sørensen, and in stead we tried to built a teaam perfect for breakaways. We failed.
The team rarely managed to get someone in the break, and when they did the group was doomed. Since we didn't have any top-shelf leaders either the result was much less than impressive - and the entertainment value possibly even lower.
The lack of results and effort really took hard on everyone around the team and for a long time our veery existance was on the line.
If it hadn't been for the insisting effort of CAS and a late season shine from Sarabia it seems very likely that this could have been the last season for the team as well as the first.
After the terrible 2014 there was a lot of pressure, though very low expectations going into the 2015 season. However with a new set of sponsors we were deteermined on turning things around.
The foundation for this obviously needeed to be made in the transfer season, where we went hard an agresssively for the best Finnish rider aruond, Jukka Vastaranta, and managed to secure him for a very low fee thanks to everyone knowing that we would force his price tag far over his value if we had to.
That allowed us to sign a couple of other big names in Anacona and to some extent Samoilev, to bolster the top end of our squad.
And boy did that turn things around. Jukka got us a win early on to rally up the spirit and evn though both him aand Anacona underperformed in a lot of races they were able to score enough to take the pressure of everyone else.
Especially Chris Anker Sørensen ws a joy to see in his new role. Where he had been our stand-out leader in 2014 he was now in the role of the underdog, which seemed to suit him a lot better as he both outscored his 2014 and got his first win for us and ultimarely getting awarded the Bull of the Year after a vote among the fans.
Very much looking forward to seeing you on the PCT level, now that we've promoted. Not for racing against you, but racing besides you!
Best of luck this season
Silvio: Thanks, it's all homemade so very happy you like it. Sadly I haven't got nearly the time to spend on Graphics work as I would have liked.
viking: Likewise. Will be weird not checking for one of my riders on Swedbanks startlists. But then again Swedbank won't feature this year
It seems likely we will run in to each other quite a lot I think.
Good luck in PCT this season - I will be honest and say that you rise from bottom to promotion in 1 season is enough motivation for me this season. Great HQ as always
Thanks. That transformation holds a lot of optimism for me ahead of promoting as well. Especially woth noticing that I only signed 3 new riders to achieve it...
Not too long ago we sent in our request for races to take part in and the MG-UCI have been so kind as to allow us to enter all our requested races so far.
We have a varied mix of races that allow us to get going from the very first day with action spread oveer most of the season, in all terrains and even all continents except Antarctica.
Obviously we're especially exited about Baltic Chain Tour that will take us through both Finland and Sweden. Now we just need someone capable of performing in that race...
Having already a broad variety of races with plenty of flat days, hilly days, mountaains and even a bit of cobbles leaves us with our options open going into the transfer season where we'll obviously be looking for a couple of new prize bulls. What breed will likely depend on the market.
