A familiar face returns to the team. Awarded as Most Valuable Domestique in our debut season Yannick Stoltz (28) makes his comeback to our yellow colors.
Stoltz is one of the strongest powerhouses in the peleton and his ability to pull at the front of the field, in breakaways or while bringing the leadout train in a good position are feared by rival teams. He often presents the colors of his team by attacking in all kind of situations and due to his recent stay with the national track team of Luxembourg he has massively improved his prologue riding.
After he left our team following the 2014 season he trained a lot and is now much stronger and we think giving him the opportunity to ride with the best cyclists will only help him to develop his abilities even further. He will earn 80k during his one year contract.
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2. Sponsor Goal : Win Tour de France
As every company that sponsors a cycling team our sponsors dream of the yellow jersey or at least a good performance in the biggest cycling race on earth.
Yes, you've heard right: Our sponsors want us to win the Tour de France.
We reckon they won't be too disappointed as long as we fulfil the rest of their goals.
Yeah, there was this one strange rule that a GT goal had to be included so i just picked the one for the best short term budget
Latvian's Cobble Future
As the best Latvian cycling team we see our team as the ideal environment for the best Latvian talents to develop. As such we have signed 22-year old Krists Neilands. Krists is a young cobbler who will soon be stronger than Andz Flaksis who currently is the best cobbler around.
While he signed a contract recently with us it is still possible that he will ride in lower level cycling first to develop faster. We are still on the team to loan him which can guarantee the quickest possible development.
The deal is written. The ink is dry. Skujins confirmed. Get hype!
We came to an agreement with Red Bull - Huawei to trade our top talents Matej Mohoric and Lasse Norman Hansen for the Latvian superstar. The signing of Skujins marks an important moment for the team as we have for the first time in our team's history a latvian leader. He'll become our leader for the Ardennes for the future.
This moment of joy is mixed with some sad feelings as a couple of deserved riders from our team's past announced their departements. The most notable names are Simon Geschke and Luis Leon Sanchez Gil who both were a major part in our back-to-back promotion to PT.
Some of them have already been replaced through some loans. Prologue Specialist Chavanne will target as many short TTs as possible. Pawel Poljanski will be an important domestique for Skujins while also getting chances on his own in the mountains. Arnaud Grand will return to our team to work for Greg Van Avermaet.
IN
Toms Skujins
Pawel Poljanski (LOAN)
Arnaud Grand (LOAN)
Gabriel Chavanne (LOAN)
OUT
Luis Leon Sanchez Gil
Matej Mohoric
Lasse Norman Hansen
Simon Geschke
Nick Ingels
Emils Liepins
Jonas Koch
arrows stolen from aidan
3. Goal : Win Tour of Northern Europe
There's one race with stages taking part in Latvia and this is the Tour of Northern Europe and thus, it's not surprising that ELKO wants to see a good performance in this race. With Greg Van Avermaet we have picked our leader for this race already but it will be difficult for him to achieve the sponsor goal as we cannot give him the same support for the TTT as other superstars will receive.
You really don't have to credit me for a petty crime such as that
The Germans, always so correct.
Great team you've built yourself there! Seeing Mohoric go obviously isn't cool, but Skujins is definitely worth it and also suits your team perfectly, focus-wise. Also sad to see succesive promotion heroes Geschke and Lulu Sanchez go, but it's only logical, and you replaced them well.
Also really liking the intro to your article.
After two years with the team promising sprinter Willi Willwohl (22) surprised the team that he wants to leave in an attempt to ride on a lower level. He'll join PCT outfit Wiesenhof - Andritz to learn from Rick Zabel.
He was the last remaining rider in the team who rode in both seasons in our team's jersey with Simon Geschke - being the only other - leaving a day earlier. Other riders have been contracted in both season but were loaned out in one of them.
One rider out, one rider in: Gediminas Bagdonas will join our team. He'll be an important domestique due to his strength on the cobbles, on the flat and currently, he's also our best time triallist which makes him especially important for GVA's attempt of winning our goal race Tour of Northern Europe.