With the clothing sponsor Kirschner and ass-sponsor Queretaro being confirmed, the team proudly announces its first out of two main sponsor of their upcoming PT season.

With a new Mexican team on the horizon we needed to make it clear we are still the number one player in the ciudad. One of the two main sponsors had to be Mexican, and preferable a big named loved and known by many. Ah yeah, and we also needed them to be rich.

That is where Oxxo comes into play. Oxxo is a Mexican chain of convenience stores and gas stations, with over 21,000 stores across Latin America, as well as in the United States and parts of Europe. It is the largest chain of convenience stores in Latin America. Its headquarters are in Monterrey, Nuevo León. Oxxo was founded only 47 years ago, but turned out to be a very big player in Mexico and beyond very quickly. Also important for the team was the expansion of Oxxo to Colombia in 2009, and Brazil in 2020.

Nemolito wrote:

Thank you for the nice comments. Main thing I will remember from them is people enjoying us staying where we are, and most of all, people being big fans of our jersey(s)!

Our final stage race of the year and already the penultimate one for the team and current sponsor. If we wanted to beat Farfetch' legendary 4447 PCT point score (with more racedays) we would need to do very well here. Manager Nemolito decided to take a little gamble and send
Higuita here, with Aular staying at home. The Colombian lost a substantial amount of time in the prologue already, but did something magnificent on the third stage. A solo attack made sure he joined the early break, after which they managed to stay ahead of the peloton and gain some nice time. Our little Colombian even won the stage!

After the mountain time trial and other hilly stage, where he finished sixth, Higuita eventually finished the race as the fourth rider in GC, which is obviously a good result. He also finished second in the points classification. Osorio came close to winning the white jersey but had to settle for second and a nice 21st in GC, whereas Lopez Nolasco also delivered points with a 30th place. Great news for Peruvian rouleur Ruiz as well, as he scored two points via the teams classification, therefore crossing the 100-point threshold. To beat the aforementioned Farfetch score, we need to have someone finish top-19 in our last race of the year.

The last official race of the PCT season has finished and our beloved
Higuita did okay by finishing the Giro dell'Emilia in ninth place, consolidating the title for Los Pollos Hermanos. More on that later.

For now, we are proud to announce our second main sponsor of the 2024 season, where we will see ourselves in PT again. In addition to Mexican company Oxxo and Mexican state Queretaro funding us, we'll also receive a nice sum of money out of Colombia. Our new sponsor pick might be considered controversial, as the Colombian side of our team will be sponsored by Frisby. Frisby is a Colombian fried chicken restaurant chain founded on June 12, 1977. It started as a pizzeria; however, later its owners decided to finally go into the fried chicken market. The chicken is dead, long live the chicken! The company has already let it known they're proud of Ocampo winning the Colombian time trial championship for Sony, as he'll wear our team's jersey (for the first time ever) next year.

In the coming two posts we would like to give you an overview of our 2023 PCT campaign. Today we focus on the team itself, in the next post we'll look at the riders individually.

We did it, we won the title! It seemed like a possibility before the season, but we thought some other team(s) would beat us, with promotion being the one and only goal. Some great performances from us and perhaps underperformances from other team's leaders lead to us winning the division title however. Obviously a first for us, something we will cherish for ever. A beautiful way for Los Pollos Hermanos to say its goodbyes to the world of cycling. Jura had a great season as well and came in second after some marvellous displays of team strength, with Xero, Fastned and Assa as the other very strong automatic promoting teams. It's also sad to see the bottom-5 relegate, but we're sure they can make their way into PCT quickly.

A record breaking season for us, as we reach 25 wins across all categories in 2023, not counting races where you can't score points. Three of the wins are teams classifications, so that's nice. Not surprisingly two of them come in time trial heavy races. We got our first ever U25 win with Osorio in Andorra, and more than two years after the team's last classic win (Celtic Chrono) our youngster Ruiz beat the odds and won a classic in France, after which Zmorka did the same some days later. Just like in our 2021 PCT promotion campaign we were unable to win any KoM, something we did do in 2020 (Petrovski in Tachira and Seboka in Andorra) and 2022 (Zmorka in Tirreno). Higuita with five wins surely made an entry, and we'll see if some more training will allow him to one day surpass the amount of wins scored by Zmorka.

Something interesting to keep in mind, with the likely departure of Zmorka and Manninen, is compare their total win count over the season(s) for us. This season Zmorka wins that rivalry with a 9-5 over Manninen. Looking at the past three seasons our two heroes were on their way to tie 17-17. Then came the unexpected Zmorka win in Arenberg, which made the Ukrainian score his 18th win for us, beating Matti. Nevertheless, total point scored in every season was always (slightly at least) in favour of the flying Finn. More on their individual masterclass of them for us this season (and in general) in the next post, but it was fun to already have a quick overview of the two certified Los Pollos legends.

Time to look our team's season goals. Unlike the previous two seasons where we went for an 'all-win-strategy', we decided to took a slightly more calm approach this time. And it worked!

We even won the division title. Great moment in the history of the team, a perfect ending to the LPH-era.

Manninen delivered. He won the first stage and did well in the others too, resulting in a second place in the final GC.

Zmorka delivered. Second in the time trial and fourth in GC was enough for our goal. Nevertheless, Manninen out-delivered him by winning the final stage and finishing third in this time-trial race.

Ukrainian Zmorka was the best time trialist in the division by two points, and he showed that in the Arab tour. He won the time trial and the GC.

Ctrl C Ctrl V what I just said.

Let's have a look at the stat gains. Not a single level one was signed this year, but luckily we still had some choices to make.

Luis Enrique Lopez Nolasco - 4.82 --> 4.100

FL	MT	HI	TT	ST	RS	RC	CO	SP	AC	FT	DH	PR
65	77	70	71	71	70	73	52	59	70	74	68	69
65	79	71	73	72	71	75	52	59	70	74	68	71

Luis Enrique takes the final step in his development. He will never be a world beater, but certainly seems to be a nice stage racing domestique. As we'll find ourselves in PT next season, it is far from unthinkable that he might even enjoy some freedom in one of the three Grand Tours we attend.

Beka Nareklishvili - 4.99 --> 4.100

FL	MT	HI	TT	ST	RS	RC	CO	SP	AC	FT	DH	PR
70	61	66	73	71	72	70	75	64	71	68	62	74
72	61	66	75	73	73	71	77	64	71	68	62	76

A bargain during the 2022 transfer window is now also fully developed, as Georgian Nareklishvili is the perfect match between time trialing and cobbling. It remains to be seen whether he will actually ride for us in PT for the second time, or if he gets sold to another team.

Guillermo Beltran - 4.99 --> 4.100

FL	MT	HI	TT	ST	RS	RC	CO	SP	AC	FT	DH	PR
68	74	74	64	69	71	69	53	62	67	68	69	62
68	76	76	64	70	72	71	53	62	69	70	69	62

Last year's Chilean national champion also takes the final step in his development, and will hopefully be able to assist Higuita even better than during the 2023 PCT season. With his skillset he will probably also be of aid in at least one GT.

Yesid Albeiro Pira - 3.25 --> 4.12

FL	MT	HI	TT	ST	RS	RC	CO	SP	AC	FT	DH	PR
62	76	68	62	64	67	70	60	60	67	66	61	61
63	78	70	64	66	69	72	60	60	68	67	61	63

Hide your wives, hide your kids and keep them hidden. Pira is 78 mountain without even being maxed. We obviously hope to be able to keep him, but it's not a secret that many teams will be looking to acquire the services of this future superstar. One more season until he has that precious red stat and will be able to destroy any competition he races in.

Oscar Samuel Galvan Ramirez - 3.30 --> 4.30

FL	MT	HI	TT	ST	RS	RC	CO	SP	AC	FT	DH	PR
71	72	69	71	69	71	70	50	64	66	69	69	72
72	74	71	73	71	73	72	50	64	67	70	69	74

After spending his inaugural pro year at Philips, OSGR now also finished his first year at us. He did well as a domestique, and is equipped to do well in PT next season too. One more year remaining for him to become that juicy 76 mtn 75 tt domestique we all love to see.

Fatiu Abolaji - 3.13 --> 4.14

FL	MT	HI	TT	ST	RS	RC	CO	SP	AC	FT	DH	PR
71	62	60	72	68	71	69	65	60	60	66	65	74
72	64	61	74	70	73	71	65	60	61	66	65	76

Not a superstar, but still a cheeky 50k pick up at the beginning of this season. The Nigerian time trialist comes one step closer towards finishing his development. Theoretically not the perfect rider for us rp-wise, but he has that something special we love to have in the team. Unless an African team comes knocking on our door we don't really see why we should let him go.

Jose Pablo Aguilar Mendez - 3.03 --> 4.19

FL	MT	HI	TT	ST	RS	RC	CO	SP	AC	FT	DH	PR
71	54	55	73	68	69	68	51	64	69	63	65	73
73	55	56	76	70	71	70	51	64	69	65	66	76

Just like the other Mexican in this post it was his second year as a pro and first year at our team, after having some fun in CT last season at Colombini. JPAG will be a part of our TTT team in PT next season and many seasons to come.

Victor Alejandro Ocampo - 4.31 --> 4.100

FL	MT	HI	TT	ST	RS	RC	CO	SP	AC	FT	DH	PR
69	59	64	76	72	71	73	54	58	63	58	66	76
70	61	66	78	74	73	75	54	58	64	59	66	78

He finally comes home! We signed Victor as a level 1 in our second season, and the man has had three different seasons on loan. First he went to a team that didn't race a single race, then he went to our Asian friends at Indosat and this season he raced for our also Asian friends at Sony. Two very nice years in Asia according to Victor, who is now a maxed out rider and could be our lead time trialist in the future.