Once again we welcome the world to our again improved headquarters here in beautiful Lviv, Ukraine. Not only have the colours changed, but the massive increase in budget we've seen as a result of promoting allowed us to actually build a state of the art trainingroom for winter training, a kitchen for both our staff and riders,
and most importantly this amazing press room we're in right now.

Speaking of the promotion to the ProTour, we are still shocked it happened, and we still cannot understand how it actually happened. The team's been a mediocre team at best for the last couple of years, however it has seriously outgrown that reputation last season. Strong additions to the team like Damiano Cunego and Romain Vanderbiest certainly helped us moving up, but we still believe that on pure quality we would never have deserved this.

With that in mind, our goal for the coming season is rather simple, not to embarress ourselves completely. We are ready to get relegated, however we are more than willing to make an attempt at overperforming for a second season in a row.


Main kit

Ukrainian climbing talent, Mark Padun will join the Nemiroff - ABBYY team as very promising climber. At the age of just 20 he is already a rider who can climb reasonably well, and still has a lot of potential to get even better. This potential has resulted in a relatively large wage of 202.000, which is quite a lot for a newly promoted team. For the coming season Mark will not join the team just yet though, we agreed to have him gain more experience first at Netia - Vónin who will pay 2.000 of his total wage.

In order to stand a chance at avoiding relegation, Nemiroff - ABBYY have gone big on a proven Grand Tour winner, Aleksandr Pluchkin, who was left without a contact after Metinvest disbanded. The Moldovan strongman will join the team at an enormous wage of 1.626.000, and therefore the pressure to deliver is high. We however have full confindence in Pluchkin's capabilities and are looking forward to seeing him in our colours.

Mihran is one of 2 talents we are loaning in this coming season to help one of friends from a lower division getting their riders to their maximum potential. The Armenian climber joins us from Novatek - Panermenian.net, who will pay all of his 50.000 wage. Mihran will mainly be a helper, but on the right day he will obviously be allowed to attack.

The second loanee joins us from Isostar - Adriatic and is more of a puncheur capable of helping Prevar in the Ardennes. Besides being a helper for Prevar, we will allow Luka a lot of opportunities to attack if he desires so, justifying the 31.000 we pay of his 50.000 wage.

The manager has shown a slight fetish for riders from small, lesser known countries in the past, and is doing so again this season by signing Samoan triathlete Darren Young. Darren is an all-round type of rider, who is mainly strong in time trials, but also has good strength over cobbles and even packs a sprint. Darren joins the team on a wage of just 50.500, and we are confident he will be worth every bit of it when he helps Pluchkin to Grand Tour glory.

Our final signing for the coming season is Ukrainian climber Volodymyr Dzhus, who, just like Pluchkin, was left without a team after Metinvest disbanded. Volodymyr joins us on a 70.500 wage, and will be used mostly as helper, however he will also get a few chances to do exciting stuff himself, and with his above avergae acceleration we expect him to be able to challenge for some KoM-jerseys and perhaps even a couple of stage wins.