This is a little story thread to document my attempts to start the first Portuguese WorldTour team. The Spanish have several, so too the Americans. In Team Sky we have a very successful, almost all British team. But why not Portugal? It has plenty of tradition, so it only seemed right to give it a go.
First up, this team would need financing. Step forward TMN, the mobile network, and Delta Cafes, the coffee producer and supplier. With these two on board, and a jersey created in the national colours, it was time to find a roster.
If you scour the rosters of the existing WT and PC teams, there are several talented Portuguese. However, few of these are in a leadership position in a top team. That is all about to change...
Leaders in this new team would be Rui Costa, Tiago Machado, Alexandr Kolobnev (a free agent in the DB I used...) and the Colombia Mauricio Ardila. Manuel Cardoso and Daniel Oss would take the sprinter roles, and Portuguese champion João Cabreira, Spaniard David de la Fuente, Sergio Paulinho and Jonathan Tiernan-Locke providing the chief support, with opportunities of their own throughout the season. Nelson Oliveira and Taylor Phinney were brought on board for their time-trialling skills, and Caldeira, Keough, Murphy, Madrazo, Siedler and the Mestres would act as domestiques.
And so, Team TMN-Delta is ready to go. Eyes in year 1 are primarily on success in the Portuguese races, starting with the Volta a Algarve and ending with the Volta a Portugal (neatly sandwiching the Portuguese national championship). But the first stop of the season is Argentina, for the Tour San Luis.
Edited by cj2002 on 20-08-2012 20:17
Good luck, just take note. It's "Força", not "Forca".
I know it sounds like a tiny difference, but it's not. One is saying "Go Portugal!" and the other is instructing them to go to the gallows to be executed
The preceding post is ISSO 9001 certified
"I love him, I think he's great. He's transformed the sport in so many ways. Every person in cycling has benefitted from Lance Armstrong, perhaps not financially but in some sense" - Bradley Wiggins on Lance Armstrong
issoisso wrote:
Good luck, just take note. It's "Força", not "Forca".
I know it sounds like a tiny difference, but it's not. One is saying "Go Portugal!" and the other is instructing them to go to the gallows to be executed
Well, maybe they are, let's wait for the first results
issoisso wrote:
Good luck, just take note. It's "Força", not "Forca".
I know it sounds like a tiny difference, but it's not. One is saying "Go Portugal!" and the other is instructing them to go to the gallows to be executed
Haha, I knew I'd missed an accent out, but I hadn't realised it was such a big difference! I'll be more careful next time.
And Ian, that is just cruel . As you will see later from my review of the Tour San Luis which I'm putting together, the team got off to a very successful start!
So, having got back from an unexpected (real-life) trip, fixed the spelling error in the thread title and uploaded my screenshots, here is the account of Team TMN - Delta at the Tour San Luis!
Tour San Luis.
As January approached February, the mood in TMN-Delta's HQ in the mountain town of Covilha was one of excitement and optimism. The main riders were all signed up for at least 2 years, as were both sponsors. There was no pressure to get immediate results - the management was prepared to let the team take time to settle in before making a real push for the top of the rankings.
Only, no-one told Daniel Oss.
After 2 stages of the Tour San Luis, Oss held both the leader's and points jerseys! Two stage wins from two sprint finishes were fantastic, but unexpected, and created something of a tactical dilemma. With the parcours becoming significantly lumpier on the remaining stages, as well as an ITT to complete, should we try and defend Oss in yellow, or sacrifice yellow for green, and push for a Top 10 GC finish with another rider.
In the end, the choice was made for us. With Oss falling off the front of he peloton in the approach to the uphill finish of Stage 3, it was Jonathan Tiernan-Locke who found himself in the position and condition to attack. And attack he did, finishing 5th, and moving up to 8th overall.
Oss' control of the green jersey was pushed hard several sprinters including Cofidis' Colombian Leonardo Duque and Orica-GreenEDGE's Tomas Vaitkus from Lithuania - these two especially pushed for intermediate bonuses throughout the remainder of the Tour. But a strong final two stages, with Oss finishing 4th and 3rd won him the jersey by a mere 5 points. A second 5th placed finish in Stage 5 helped JTL secure 8th overall in the GC - less than a minute off the eventual winner Fabio Felline - and rounded off a very successful trip to Argentina.
Next on the team schedule is a very busy start to February. The team will be in Italy at the GP Costa degli Etruschi, in Spain for the Trofeo Mallorca and challenging for the sprints again at the Tour of Qatar. All of which serves to get the wheels turning ahead of our first real objective of the season - The Volta ao Algarve.
Edited by cj2002 on 20-08-2012 20:18
The challenge of racing in 3 places at once is significant. In the same short period of days, Team TMN-Delta were present in Mallorca, Qatar and Italy. The big guns had started coming out to play, so these were not going to be easy races to succeed in, and for a lot of the TMN roster this would be their first outing.
So, expectations were realistic and the results a suitably mixed bag.
GP Coppa degli Etruschi
The Italian 1.1 race didn't have a difficult parcours; 3 relatively simple climbs followed by 3 laps of a finishing circuit. It came down to a sprint between all those who had made it through the climbs without losing time - 166 of the 190 starters. Sadly, the TMN train faltered. Sebastien Siedler lost the wheel of his lead out man, and by the time the train had reformed, the chance of a win was lost. Victory went to Giacomo Nizzolo from Radioshack.
But, there were positives we took away from Italy. Tactically the team was lacking maturity, but for all 7 riders to come home with the same time as the winner showed excellent promise for forthcoming stage races.
Trofeo Mallorca
The 4 stages Trofeo Mallorca was another mixed bag. Two flat days, two difficult climbing days. Francesco Ventoso was the man to beat over the first two stages; Manuel Cardoso was our dedicated sprinter, but his lack of race fitness showed as he faded towards the end of both stages; in Stage 1, Kolobnev took the opportunity to sprint to an excellent second place behind Ventoso with JTL 5th. After another bunch sprint on day 2, again won by Ventoso, all TMN riders finished in the same time, securing Kolobnev 3rd and JTL 4th in the GC ahead of the mountains.
The parcours in the middle east couldn't have been more different. Pan flat for all 6 stages, this was ideal terrain for Daniel Oss to flex his sprint muscles again. In Stage 1, he mistimed his break from Sebastien Siedler's wheel, finishing 8th. It was a similar story in Stage 4, where he finished 11th. But it was Stage 3 where the hard work came closest to paying off.
TMN, along with Lampre and GreenEDGE controlled the peleton all day, providing the Italian with the perfect leadout. But Anthony Roux of FDJ-Bigmat took the win on the line from Daniel Oss, with Tom Boonen pushed into 3rd. As if to further demonstrate the class of the TMN train, Sebastien Siedler himself came across in 6th and Taylor Phinney 11th.
Stage 2's TTT performance wrote off any hope TMN-Delta had of challenging for the GC, but Oss was determined to keep putting in the sprint finishes. Sadly, the big boys had woken up! Stage 5 was a straight duel between Tom Boonen and Mark Cavendish, with round 1 going to the Belgian (Oss finishing 7th). In the final stage, Boonen jumped early but Cavendish responding, with the Manx Missile dominating the sprint and winning by several lengths from overall victor Heinrich Haussler of Garmin-Sharp. Daniel Oss finished that sprint 9th, but took a respectable 6th in the points competition.
The Future
Next on the agenda... The Volta ao Algarve: One of 3 Portuguese races, Tiago Machado will be hoping to make an impact for the home team. The Tour de Haut Var: A climber's paradise, Rui Costa will be leading the TMN train through France. The Vuelta a Andalucia/Ruta del Sol: Former Russian Champion Alexandr Kolobnev and Portuguese Champion João Cabreira are on the roster for the 5 day race across the border in Spain.
PLUS: It's World Tour Wild Card season, and TMN-Delta are delighted to accept invitations to join the Amstel Gold Race, Paris-Roubaix and Milan-San Remo. Time to join the big leagues, boys!
Ahead of the first Portuguese race of the season, Team TMN-Delta is extremely excited to announce the culmination of weeks of negotiations. Perhaps spurred on by the impressive start to the season, the members of Sport Lisboa e Benfica, one of Portugal's foremost sports clubs, have voted overwhelmingly to adopt the TMN-Delta team, reintroducing the Benfica name that has been missing from the cycling world since 2008.
The roster, management and sponsorship remains the same, but the benefit of Benfica's marketing reach will be harnessed as Benfica - TMN - Delta continues its march towards World Tour Status. This will also reunite Rui Costa with the team where he made his professional debut, in the 2007 Volta ao Algarve.
To celebrate, and to provide incentive for the riders ahead of their National Championships in June, Nike have produced designs for Champions Jerseys for all the riders, should they be victorious. With the likes of Costa, Kolobnev, Oss and Tiernan-Locke, we can be hopeful of seeing at least some of these in use next season.
. As you will see later from my review of the Tour San Luis which I'm putting together, the team got off to a very successful start!
Okay, then forget about the "c" 
