As many of you will have heard through invitations to the relevant teams we at Euskaltel – Euskadi have decide to start hosting a small series of races solely for riders from the greater Basque region, composed of Euskadi, Navarre and (part of) Aquitaine. We have decided to invite riders from the entire Aquitaine though as French Basque is not recognized as an independent region thus not appearing in the UCI-files.



The first race will be held shortly after the continental championships on the route of Clásica San Sebastián and in future editions we will be revisiting the routes of other races in the region.
At this moment we have agreements with the organizers of GP Miguel Indurain, Klasika Primavera, Prueba Villafranca-Ordiziako Klasika and Circuito de Getxo.
We are also in talks with the Vuelta al País Vasco-organizers in order to possibly borrow a stage or two from them in the future.
If anyone feels we have missed something in terms of routes feel free to say so.


Teams with riders from more than one of the regions have been allowed to split their team into smaller regional teams, but only Euskaltel have decided to use that opportunity.

At this point the following riders have agreed to start the race:
Ladagnous and Fédrigo of FDJ.fr have both announced that they won't take part in the first race, but might join up at a later point.
As you can see several of the teams can only field one or two riders and since 11 riders didn’t get a spot in any of the other teams we have decided to offer them as helpers for the lone rider to make the race a bit less strenuous for Gárate, Fernández and the others.
Unless otherwise agreed the organizers will assign the helpers to the teams, who need them the most.
Those riders are:

The following have received an invitation, but have not responded yet:
Of course any new Basque riders that might appear will automatically be invited as well.


Occasionally throughout the season we might supplement with races in other kind of terrains that the riders have to be able to handle in modern cycling such as a small cobbled race or a completely flat race.

Ranking points will be given as shown below. Races outside the Basque Country will give half the points.
The first race will only be open to local riders, but in later editions we might issue special invitations to teams not represented, who have made a good show in one (or more) of the Basque races.
We might also open permanently for riders with special connection to the Basque country, but they would have to make a good case for themselves and they will not be allowed to enter if their team are already fielding 8 riders or more.
Riders feeling eligible are allowed to nominate themselves by contacting the Euskaltel - Euskadi management.

With all races in part 1 of the season done with this seems to be a good moment to have a closer look at the highlights and the numbers.

Tarik Chaoufi had the honour of being the rider with most days on the bike in part one with 31 race days. That is more than half of the total days the team raced. he was in several breakaways during that time, but failed to score a single points for the rankings. Still a good effort as a valued team member.

The highest scoring rider was the teams biggest star Samuel Sánchez thanks to a solid effort in Tirreno - Adriatico as well as a brilliant show in Volta a Catalunya. That also makes him the most efficient of our rides with an avaerage of 25,5 pts per race day.
The efficiency and the overall points fit niecely together exept for Rudy Verboven and Gorka Izagirre, who both have been more efficient than Pérez.

The only three riders actualy winning something takes places 2-4 in the rankings both in total points and efficiency.

As for the calendar things look a bit different than expected.
Even though the four most points-giving races all had mountains in them it is worth noticing that Clasica Almería and Kuune-Bruxelles-Kuurne are on a shared 3rd place calculating the amount of points/day. A flat classic and a cobbled race actually being valuable for Euskaltel is certainly untraditional, but also the kind of thing we need to survive on the World Tour.

You can always check the first page of the HQ to see how we are doing in terms of scoring points, but here are the rankings as we have calculated them at this time to sum up the first part of the season.

	Samuel	Sánchez	14	357	25,5
	Ion	Izagirre	17	323	19,0
	Igor	Antón	15	208	13,9
	Juan José	Lobato	19	69	3,6
	Ioannis	Tamouridis	14	28	2,0
	Gorka	Izagirre	7	12	1,7
	Rudy	Verboven	18	23	1,3
	Rubén	Pérez	26	25	1,0

Ollfardh wrote:
Thank you, it looks very good! But do I have some racedays left for the eneco tour and the late season classics?

With the break well underway we have now finalized the startlist for the first race in the series.
First a thanks to Rudy Verboven, who have convinced to of his old friends from his youth in Vlaanderen namely De Jongh and Van Hoecke of Topsport Vlaanderen to take the trip here. The two young Belgians will be extra eyes and ears for us on the road.

You probably all have a decent idea as to who are the big names, but this list will give you a good overview over who also has some decent support. You will also get an overview over how the domestiques have been assigned.

The helpers have generally been assigned in a way where the strongest riders have been assigned the strongest helpers and the helpers have been told to leave their fighting spirit at home unless told otherwise by their captains.

Obviously Euskaltel – Euskadi is the team everyone is looking at since they are the only team with top riders fielding the max of 8 riders. Antón seems the obvious captain, but Ion Izagirre have had a very strong early season as well and Pérez is a decently strong finisher should he make it all the way in the front.

You can’t underestimate Movistar though as the Spanish team in Intxausti and Castroviejo has two very strong riders and two strong helpers on top of that. Inxausti have even been given the number 1 by the organizing committee.


Euskaltel – Navarre is another strong team with Nieve and de las Campos on the climbs and Urtasun able to put in a strong finish. It does seem like a team that could prove lacking a bit in the top on a finish like this.


Zubeldia, Gárate and Fernández are all strong riders, who doesn’t have much of a team to rely on. Gárate looked strong in the recently raced GP Miguel Indurain and Fernández will have very good chances in a sprint, but it is very questionable if he will be able to stay in the front group over the climbs.


The most noteworthy underdog has to be Txurruka, who should be the absolute captain of Caja Rural and with his attacking spirit could be very hard for the big favourites to control.

Besides that I’m sure that all the talent-teams and Gorka Nieve will be highly motivated to prove that they are worthy of a contract on a higher level.

1	Po-ding Kim	Team Europcar	1h02'01
33	Tarik Chaoufi	Euskaltel - Euskadi	+ 4'41

1	Bradley Wiggins	Sky Procycling	1h02'17
31	Ion Izagirre	Euskaltel - Euskadi	+ 3'12
46	Samuel Sánchez	Euskaltel - Euskadi	+ 3'28
70	Gorka Verdugo	Euskaltel - Euskadi	+ 4'16
76	Ioannis Tamouridis	Euskaltel - Euskadi	+ 4'53

[img-l]https://hl2mp.tsgk.com/hlstatsimg/flags/es_states/euskadi.png[/img-l]

The month started with an ending: The final stage of Critérium International. A stage where we saw Cristiano de las Campos completely sacrifice his own chances trying to protect Ion’s GC lead in spite of Cristiano being the by far strongest climber on the team and he proved it by pulling things apart allowing Ion to take a GC podium. With a form like this I think Cristiano could have had a shot at the win himself had he not been such a good teammate.

Good team mates could also be the keyword for our next challenge: Volta a Catalunya. We came with a strong team to support Sánchez in his hard goal of getting on the podium.
The team did brilliantly to make sure Samu didn’t have to do anything before the finale and he thanked for the effort with four stage top 10’s and an overall 3rd place to great joy for the sponsors and everyone else.

At the same time we had finally been given the go to start racing in Tour of Oman. Once again Ion proved to be awesome by finishing 3rd in the GC less than half a minute away from the overall win.

While on a high note we might as well give a thought to our days on the cobbles. E3 and Gent - Wevelgem. De Panne started on a high note with Verboven’s 4th place on the first stage, but that was all we got out of that race as well…

Luckily the disappointing Belgian campaign didn’t affect the team racing our first home-field race Gran Premio Miguel Indurain in Navarre. A couple of the cobbles-riders including Verboven was on the team in support of Igor Antón and boy did they do a good job! The team controlled all the attacks forcing the other favourites to waste a lot of energy to no good allowing Igor to take them in the end beating Valverde on the line for the win!

The month ended with the Continental ITT Championships where Tarik managed to be faster than four other riders and Ion got fairly close to a top 20. All in all a decent warm-up for the road races…

	First Name	Last Name	Days	Points
	Ion	Izagirre	7	222
	Samuel	Sánchez	7	202
	Igor	Antón	8	120
	Rubén	Pérez	7	8
	Miguel	Mínguez	11	5
	Pello	Bilbao	7	5
	Rudy	Verboven	7	5
	Cristiano	de las Campos	1	5

Riders not mentioned did not race this month. Full rankings can be found in post #2

With strong rides from both Igor, Ion and Samuel this month it was a hard choice. Ion was probably the most surprising and Igor winning on home soil was a great moment.

Never the less the award goes to Samuel Sánchez for achieving a hard goal and showing the world that we are still to be taken serious on WT-mountains.

Firstly we'll be racing the continental championships with all our best hilly riders present in Europe and Tarik Chaoufi a one-man army in the Aufrazian race. To be honest we don't have too big expectations but we will expect everyone to try their best!

Our man focus of the upcoming races though is our home tour Vuelta al País Vasco. As the most important race all season we will bring the strongest possible team with Sánchez, Antón, de las Campos, Ion Izagirre, Landa, Nieve, Martínez and Urtasun with a free role in the sprints.

This time we’ll have a quick look at the most important race for our team: Vuelta Ciclista al País Vasco.

The first edition was raced back in 1924 and was won by the Frenchman Fancís Pélissier.
Ricardo Montero Hernandez was the first Spaniard to take a win when he won stage one in the 1928-edition of the race.

More important though is Mariano Cañardo Lacasta, who being born in Navarra was the first rider from Euskal Herria to get success in the race when he took stage 4 and along with it the GC in 1930.

Mariano Cañardo

In 1936 civil war broke out in Spain with the military coup resulting in the fascist regime of Franco. As a direct result our beloved race wasn’t raced again until 1969, where the renowned Jacques Anquetil won the GC in his last year as a pro with Basque rider Francisco Gabicagogeascoa Ibarra 2nd and another Basque, Domingo Perurena Telletxea, taking the final stage. It only took one further year to get the first Basque winner in Luis Pedro Santamarina Antonana.
Telletxea went on to several more wins. In fact he shares the record for most stage wins (11) with Sean Kelly. In contrast to the Irishman Domingo never managed to bag a GC win.

With that in mind we will jump to 1994 when Agustín Sagasti in our teams first year gave the team a win on stage 5 – the team’s first ever win! Sadly Agustín’s career was cut short by a nasty crash in 1995 and to make the story even worse he died only 39 years old in 2009.

Agustín Sagastin

From there on followed a series of year where Iñigo Cuesta’s GC win in 1998 was the closest thing we got to a win. He rode for ONCE at the time, but he did ride his first two years for Euskadi in spite of being born in Castilla y Leon.
In reality it took until 2001 for this team to get another win. Still not a true Basque though as Angel Castresana del Val also hailed from Castilla y Leon, but at least he didn’t change to ONCE until the year after his Basque stage win.

Things improved much in 2002 where we got to stage wins thanks to David Etxebarria and Aitor Osa Eizaguirre became the first Basque to win the GC 6 years after he had left his first team Euskadi. David finished on 2nd place in that instance – our best GC result so far!

David Etxebarria

Those were some good years as Iban Mayo finally made the dream come true in 2003 when he won three stages as well as the GC. Finally a Basque winner on a Basque team of our wonderful Basque race. Thiswas obviously an omen of his great season followed up by 2nd places in Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Dauphiné and his iconic stage win on Alpe d’Huez.

Mayo’s win should also prove to be the end of the Basque rule over the race.

Samuel Sánchez

Not until Samuel Sánchez’ win on stage 6 in 2007 did our team reach the podium again. Fortunately that was an omen for better times as our former rider Basque-born David Herrero Llorente won a stage in 2008 and Sammy came back to take the points jersey in 2009 and a stage in both 2010 and 2011 before he finally brought the orange jersey back on the top step in 2012. And that very effectively with two stage wins and the points jersey along the way.