After the major sucess last season, Compal have decided to continue their project to mantain and develop Asian cycling. In order to do that successfully, the board have decided to progress gradually and take small steps at a time. In other words, we will try to have a higher emphasize toward talents in the future. We understand this will take time and patience for our supporters, but in the same time we will like to keep as many as we can of the riders from the 2015-season, build upon those riders, and then add a few exciting talents every season that will gradually take the step to be professionals.
We believe this is the best way for us to approach this new beginning in the PCT-division, both economically, but also to make sure that the upcoming Asian riders will be in the best hands.
This years exciting news is that we'll have Fominykh and Choi back from loan, and we're looking forward to see what they can do this season. We also still have KazakhGold on our sponshorship team and they will make sure to protect our interests in Central-Asia.
Welcome to Taipei, welcome to the future of Asian cycling!
2016 presentation
Compal Electronics Merida Bikes KazakhGold
Compal-Merida continues with having master designer Bikex on our team, and enjoys a very happy relationship with him and his work.
Bouth our Taiwanese and Kazakh sponsors are delighted to have their respective national champion on our team, and is looking forward to a season with Compal-riders in their national colours.
Nice HQ - woah stunning flags there - and nice to see you'll stick to that beautiful jersey! Hope you have more luck than 2014 and with such a starting squad you'll build your 2016 team around you won't have a hard life at building a succesfull PCT team I hope!
You already did half the work bringing us to PCT by selling us Zeits. So nice to see you up here as well. I think you should manage to stay up here, so good luck achieving that.
Well, you never know trek, Zeits might be bringing Compal further up after the transfer season when he's coming back. That would be a pleasant surprise for our Kazakh sponsors
Thank you Ian, forget about Latin America and come join us race in Asia, then I'll see you in plenty of races!
Good luck staying up this year, hopefully we will finally both be in the same division next season as we aim to follow your lead and promote straight back first time of asking.
Wow, I like your guy's NCs! Will be good to be racing in the same division together again. Also, with Choi on his way back your team becomes quite formidable even without any transfers having been made. It's a great base to work with. Looking forward to see what you do with it! Good luck this season - but I'm sure you won't need it.
After a successfull 2015-season, were everybody gave their best to achieve promotion, we have decided to give all our wonderful riders new contracts!
Trent Lowe
€100,000
Michael Matthews
€100,000
Christopher Sutton
€50,000
William Walker
€50,000
Ki Ho Choi
€200,000
Abolfazl Gilanipoor
€90,000
Behnam Khalilikhosrosham
€50,000
Alexandr Dyachenko
€60,000
Alexandre Shushemoin
€75,000
Daniil Fominykh
€50,000
Ruslan Tleubayev
€50,000
Jack Bauer
€100,000
Dmitri Kozontchuk
€60,000
Chan Jae Jang
€50,000
Sung Baek Park
€50,000
Kun Hung Hung
€60,000
Yin Chi Wang
€60,000
The way forward
We are pretty happy with our team and for the first time in our history, we are not actively trying to sell any of our riders, and we'll probably keep all of them. But as always, money talks. When it comes to the transfer targets, we have some very interesting asian names on our list. But if we're realistic we'll probably get maximum one of our main targets. Therefore we will continue to look to Oceania to find new wonderkids like Michael Matthews and a brand new plan for this season is that we also want to head over the pacific to explore the american market. If we fail considerably, we'll also look to the crowded eastern europe, but hopefully we can get one or two new quality asians on board first. That's definately our main goal this season!
Edited by Bjartne on 09-06-2016 19:32
We have decided to go for quite achievable goals this year as we're not sure how the team will look in a months time from now. All of our focus races will as usual be located in Eastern Asia, and we look forward to please our home supporters with some good racing. We hope that we can succesfully achieve 3 of these goals.
Compal have had a good regional focus since the start, but have always lacked youth development. Our team was aging and we needed fresh blood. Therefore, we went into transfer season with one clear goal. Keep all of the existing riders and fill the rest of the squad entirely with U-21 riders. In addition, we want to become a cycling team that supports weaker cycling nations to help them develop profesional riders
We managed to get 12 out of 13 riders we wanted, whereas the last one was a superb Sri Lankan talent that Ayubowan! managed to get hold on. So we were actually really happy with the transfer season. But when the first team presentations of other PCT-teams started to flow around in the media, we quickly discovered that our team wouldn't stand a chance in the division.
That meant all of our training money and remaining wage cap would need to be invested in a super star, and after some scouting we found our man:
We are pleased to announce that
Thomas Dekker have been signed by Compal-Merida and will be our biggest hope in keeping us up. Even though there have been a great amount of good climber signings into PCT this season, we still believe Dekker should rank among the best. In top form he's a beast, so I hope he can bring us valuable points.
Anatoliy Pakthusov and Giovanni Visconti were two additional last minute signings we got for cheap with tons of experience to help our younger riders.
But then we come to the majority of our riders. The under 21's!
Youngest rider:
Erick Herrera is actually only 20 years old and should be one of the youngest professional cyclists in the Man-Game. He doesn't have a great potential at all, but he enjoys climbing and can maybe surprise in a breakaway already now at his young age. He is from El Salvador and could possibly bring us some colorful national jerseys in the future.
Youngest nation:
Ethiopia is a very interesting nation and we'll like to be a part of their development project. Our first ethiopian signing is also our
quickest rider, in Kedir Seid. In a couple of years time, he will be a great young sprinter.
But we didn't want Kedir to be all be himself, so we signed an Ethopian companion to him. Getachew Sendeku is a versatile rider that can be a decent domestique in montaineaous, hilly and/or stages against the clock. Although Kedir is thought to have a better future, we thing Getachew is an exciting prospect and we want to give him a chance.
Weirdest signing
Jean Junor is much the same type as Getachew. Actually, his worst stat is 62, and his best main stat is 67, and he doesn't really have any speciality, and he isn't exactly terrible in anything either, so he's kind of an allrounder. We will try to develop him into a domestique pucheur and see how he'll do. The fact that he is from the tiny caribbean island of Aruba made him more interesting to sign compared to similar or better riders from already developed cycling countries.
Most local youth:
Guangtong Ma will keep our sponsors happy. He'll end up as a good sprinter with great abilities to get over the hill. Much like a Peter Sagan type of rider. And the good news: his ability to climb is also very much there. So he'll definately be an important rider for us in the future.
Most valuable loaned out rider:
Morne Van Niekerk is going to be a very strong time trialist in a few years. We are glad to see him ride in his home country at Team Telkom for Africa and are watching his development closely. He is by far our best talent against the clock and we will be valuable for us when he reach his potential.
Biggest talent:
Stylianos Farantakis is a sprinter with a great potential. But the reason we rate him as the biggest talent, isn't his sprinter abilities, but rather the fact that apart from sprinting, he's quite capable of both ride on cobblestones and on hilly terrain. So while he'll never be a top top sprinter, we hope he will be able to hang on to the peloton when other sprinters are starting to fall of the pace. We're looking forward to see what our greek friend can do in our jersey.
Best signing:
Our best signing was clearly Caio Godoy wich we were very surprised to get unchallenged and at a minimum wage, as there are quite a few south american teams around. He's a big climbing talent, and manager Bjartne have already named him "the new Magno Nazaret"
He is a rider we think will have a great career and we'll like to keep him as long as we can.
We will continue to search for young talents, and especially from small nations. Our 3 years plan for this project is to win Tour d'l'Avenir.
Here are the full list of riders, including new signings.
It will be definitely quite tough for you to stay in the PCT but if Dekker delivers it will be close!
I like how you went from having the smallest team in CT to the biggest in PCT, definitely a completely different approach in many different ways you took there!
Thanks, it wil indeed be tough, so Thomas Dekker was an absolutely desperate move in order to maybe secure a spot for PCT next year as well. I really hope it would be enough
Jean Junor 
Elias Abou Rachid 
Sachin Dulanjana 
So nice to see you up here as well. 
