After a miserable season, Europcar decided to not renew it's sponsorship contract with the team. After weeks of searching, team manager Bjartne was approached by a local norwegian power company and now the contract is signed.
A huge thanks to shirt designer hillis91!
Spoiler
The new sponsor is Tafjord Kraft with headquarters in Ålesund, Norway!
A big part of the deal is that that the team should slowly transitioning from the old Europcar-profile towards the new strategy of signing only talents from mainly Nordic countries.
Tafjord Kraft promises on their half to give time to this new project, so that eventually we'll be able to promote with self-developed riders from the area.
Manager Bjartne says he's excited to give youth a chance, even though the squad core as of now is way past 30 years.
"We had to do something drastically with the squad anyway, so I'm relieved we now share a common goal in the future squad building. This will of course not help us promote next season, and maybe not the next two seasons either, but I'm confident this will be the right step forward in the long term.
One of the things Bjartne is most looking forward to, is to build a competetive Avenir-squad.
"This will finally give us the chance to compete in U-23-races with our own team colours, and we're really looking forward to it! Hopefully, we can also help Norway U-23 to compete with the big guns in the Worlds after some seasons."
The future looks bright on the norwegian west coast.
Only bad news here, no Austrians in releases and another Norwegian team, a disaster has struck ! But maybe a new sponsor will allow you to bounce back after disappointing last season
The transfer season is over and Tafjord has begun to plan for the future.
No less than seven 22-year olds from Norway and Denmark will ride in our jersey the next season and we can't wait to bring a full squad to Tour de l'Avenir.
We've also kept our best riders, so we do hope we can challenge for a top 10 this season whilst also develop for the future.
I was expecting you to go even more all-in for the other Johannessen and Leknessund after the sponsor change, but that's still a solid Scandinavian core and anything beyond that would've absolutely killed your immediate scoring potential.
Interesting to see Doubey listed as a baroudeur though, but I guess in CT he's good enough to do anything!
cio93 wrote:
I was expecting you to go even more all-in for the other Johannessen and Leknessund after the sponsor change, but that's still a solid Scandinavian core and anything beyond that would've absolutely killed your immediate scoring potential.
Interesting to see Doubey listed as a baroudeur though, but I guess in CT he's good enough to do anything!
Oh, believe me, we did go as far as we could, I was about to fire 5 riders but we also needed to get above 15, so even though those three were our main priorities, I only managed to get one of them unfortunately. And that left a giant wage cap so we could spend on a lot of other talents.
So the transfer market went a little bit below our expectations. If we had a PCT-wage cap, we would never give up on any of those
Doubey is a bit of an allrounder, so we want to give him a free role this season, especially in stage races, to see if he can go on to win a couple og stages. Looking forward to see him racing.
Bjartne wrote:
Oh, believe me, we did go as far as we could, I was about to fire 5 riders but we also needed to get above 15, so even though those three were our main priorities, I only managed to get one of them unfortunately. And that left a giant wage cap so we could spend on a lot of other talents.
So the transfer market went a little bit below our expectations. If we had a PCT-wage cap, we would never give up on any of those
Doubey is a bit of an allrounder, so we want to give him a free role this season, especially in stage races, to see if he can go on to win a couple og stages. Looking forward to see him racing.
Norway has three of the best 12 juniors this season, so as long as you can stick with the regional focus until then, there's another opportunity for the big haul further down the road.
Bjartne wrote:
Oh, believe me, we did go as far as we could, I was about to fire 5 riders but we also needed to get above 15, so even though those three were our main priorities, I only managed to get one of them unfortunately. And that left a giant wage cap so we could spend on a lot of other talents.
So the transfer market went a little bit below our expectations. If we had a PCT-wage cap, we would never give up on any of those
Doubey is a bit of an allrounder, so we want to give him a free role this season, especially in stage races, to see if he can go on to win a couple og stages. Looking forward to see him racing.
Norway has three of the best 12 juniors this season, so as long as you can stick with the regional focus until then, there's another opportunity for the big haul further down the road.
I'll definitely keep an eye out for your jersey!
Soren GOAT Waerenskjold. Bjartne can keep the rest, I'll have the GOAT
As others have said, some good signings to build your core on. Fancied several of the riders my self (and still do), so expect us to coming knocking in a season or two
For a while there I thought you were going to get both Johannnessens for 150k a piece, still one at that price is pretty good although pity to only get one out of three targets as I think your long term plan is great (McCormick being a fan of long-term plans).
May need to start bribing PT managers now as getting 7 PT loans done could be a challenge.
