Welcome to the homepage of the newly named Repsol-Cativen. We are now a Pro-continental tour team, after a very successful season as Team Cativen where we achieved third in the Continental Division 2. Repsol-Cativen will remain as a Venezuelan based team despite adding the Spanish based petrol company Repsol as a co-sponsor.
This season Repsol-Cativen aims to create a solid base of riders to allow us to push for promotion in the years to come. For now we are aiming to finish around mid-table, and to make sure that we stay clear of relegation.
Repsol-Cativen's goals for the 2013 season are as follows:
Top 5 in the America Tour Team Standings. (3)
Win Clasica a Quetzaltenango. (4)
Top 5 in Vuelta al Tachira. (3)
Top 5 Kenya Mountain Classic. (4)
Top 5 in Tour of Vancouver. (4)
Vuelta al Tachira will be considered our main goal for the season as it is the team's home race. We will want to impress our Venezuelan fans at this race. This means that we will aim to build a team which is very capable of getting a good result in this race. As our other race goals also contain mountains this means that building a team for Tachira will then help to have a team capable of completing all of these goals.
Edited by brownwm on 29-11-2012 21:23
80 Mountain
75 Hill
74 Time Trial
75 Stamina
78 Resistance
76 Recovery
Stage Racers
Alex Ardila Cano
77 Mountain
71 Hill
70 Time Trial
Sergio Ortega
76 Mountain
75 Time Trial
Jairo Agudelo
77 Mountain
72 Time Trial
Climbers
Mauricio Soler
76 Mountain
74 Hill
Wilmer Vasquez
78 Mountain
75 Resistance
Jimmi Briceno
76 Mountain
70 Hill
Puncheurs
Janier Alexis Acevedo
71 Mountain
75 Hill
Honorio Machado
73 Hill
74 Sprint
Sprinters
Roberto Ferrari
77 Sprint
80 Acceleration
Rafael Andriato
78 Sprint
76 Acceleration
Kim Marius Nielsen
77 Sprint
78 Acceleration
Young Riders
Fernando Briceno
Xavier Quevedo
Sebastian Anaya
Jonathan Salinas
Carlos Johan Galviz
Michael Rodriguez Galindo
Estifanos Kebede
Edited by brownwm on 13-08-2013 14:47
The first race of the the year for Repsol-Cativen was the Vuelta al Tachira. A 12 stage race in our home country of Venezuela.
The first 4 flat stages should have been uneventful for us, but disaster struck on stage 3 when both Jairo Agudelo and Wilmer Vasquez fell. Having to of our top climbers crash on a flat stage was a bad blow, but it would hopefully allow them to devote themselves to one leader.
On the first hilly stage our climbers all stayed in the main group at 1:38 behind. Both Acevedo and Ardila Cano finished in the elite group of 11 on stage 7 with Ardila getting 4th on the stage, this moved him into 8th overall, while Briceno also remained in the top 20.
Going into the final three stages we had Ardila in 10th overall and Briceno in 12th, while another three riders were in the top 30. Stage 10 was a crucial mountain stage which would heavily impact the final results. On stage 10 Ardila, Soler and Briceno all managed to finsh in the top 15, this moved them up slightly into 8th, 11th and 16th in the GC.
On the final mountain stage Ardila continued to do well, but both Soler and Briceno struggled. This meant that by the end Ardila managed a good 6th in the overall with Briceno in 12th and Soler in 19th, unfortunately this meant we just missed out on our top 5 goal, but it was a satisfactory start to the season.
Edited by brownwm on 19-08-2013 12:24
Next up we had the Tour of South Africa and the Tour of San Luis.
We had a very unsuccessful tour in South Africa with our best GC finish of 29th, Andriato did manage one top 5 in a sprint stage but overall it was a disappointing time.
Next up San Luis
It started well with Machado, finishing 5th on the first stage and then Ferrari backed that up with 13th on the next stage.
The stage 4 time trial was not a good day out with Machado our best finished in 44th, this put our overall hopes out the window, so we were
looking for good stage results.
Machado managed to finish off the tour with a top 5 on stage 7, but this capped an underwhelming tour for the team.
This was followed by the Tour of Langkawi. Here we managed 8th and 9th in the overall with Soler and Ardila Cano respectively, this is despite Ardial losing 1:33 on one of the flat stages.
Edited by brownwm on 19-08-2013 12:44
Following a disappointing start to the season, next up we had a trio of mountain races which the team had high hopes for. These were the Kenya Mountain classic, Corsica International and the Tour of Vancouver. This was a crucial point in our season as we needed a big result to turn it around.
First up to Kenya.
This was leader, Andrei Kashechkin's first race of the season and we were hoping that he could pull off a big result for the team.
Young Ethiopian climber Kebede showed himself well by getting into the breakaway, he showed himself as one for the future.
Unfortunately Kashechkin did not have a good legs on the day and was unable to stay with the big favourites, he did recover quite well, but he just missed out on a top 10, with an 11th overall.
Next up Corsica, and we needed to have a good showing to bounce back from Kenya.
A three stage race with a mountain stage and a time trial made execution key as there was only one chance to get it right.
On stage 1 all our climbers stayed safe in the peloton ready for the big stages to begin. First up was the time trial. It wasn't a great day, but all our climbers stayed within a minute with Agudelo our best placed rider, it would all come down to the mountain stage.
Ardila Cano managed to get in the break of the day, and being only 43 seconds down he could prove to be a danger.
On the way to the final climb Ardila cleaned up the mountain points, now it came down to whether he could hold on.
Unfortunately the oncoming peloton was too strong for Ardila and he couldn't stay away. However Agudelo and Vasquez did manage to finish in 15th and 16th in the stage, which is slightly disappointing, and it lead to them finishing in the same positions in the GC. Ardila Cano also walked away with the King of the Mountains win, which is a consolation from the race.
Then the team headed off to Vancouver for another tough race, consisting of two time trials and two big mountain stages, and three flat stages.
On the first mountain stage Jimmi Briceno managed 7th with the rest of the climbers finishing in the top 30.
Honorio Machado then manage to come 3rd in the next flat stage which at the time was our best result in a stage so far in the year.
On the next mountain stage Wilmer Vasquez attacked before the final climb, in a risky move he then managed to hold off the oncoming climbers until the final 200m, however he managed to stay in second. A great result. However both Briceno and Agudelo both got dropped early on, both losing time. So in the end we had four riders in 17th, 19th, 20th and 22nd in the GC, unfortunately our riders couldn't stay consistent over the two mountain stages.
The last two stages didn't change the GC positions of our riders, so it ended with another disappointing race. We did manage to take the win in the team competition.
Edited by brownwm on 23-08-2013 20:16
Next up was the Tour of Japan, a six stage race which had the potential to be a successful race for us.
It started off really well, with Janier Alexis Acevedo taking the second stage of the race in a sprint finish, our first win of the year, and one to remember. This allowed him to take the yellow jersey due to time bonuses.
On the next stage Acevedo finished in sixth in another sprint finish, but due to the time bonuses he lost the leaders jersey. However bad news as both Ortega and Agudelo lost time, really bad news going into the mountain time trial.
We performed well on the mountain time trial with Ardila Cano, Agudelo and Ortega finishing 5th, 6th and 9th on the stage, however Acevedo lost 2:38, which put back into 18th overall. Ardila Cano was 6th in the GC with Agudelo in 19th.
All our riders lost time on stage 5, with Ardila losing the least, however he did lose one place in the GC.
Roberto Ferrari did well on the final stage to claim 2nd, his first result of the season, it was a small positive on an otherwise awful day for the team, with Agudelo crashing out and Ardila Cano losing time to drop to 15th in the overall.
I will be going away for approximately two months, and I will have minimal internet access, this means that I won't really be able to update my page, and rarely able to comment on race pages. I just want to let everyone know that I will not be contributing because I will be unable to.
