The team management of Team Puma - SAP was finally found under the tables of their own party, and after a short hospital stay to sober them up, we are soon able to present you a first statement regarding both 2012 and 2013.
Staff member who prefers not to be named
Team manager during the party.
No, wait, that's Hasselhoff.
My bad.
Rumous place Pierre Rolland with the newly formed french setup, Team Festina. Several TT riders are rumoured to take part of the deal, where names such as Daan Rijntjes, Olivier Kaisen and Kristof Goddaert has been mentioned. Any sober comments on the subject?
We, the leading management of soon-to-be Pro Tour team Puma - SAP are still thrilled about the magnificient efforts our riders showed throughout the whole season and especially in the decisive phase in the recent weeks.
We therefore apologize for the slight delay and the unpersonal way of releasing this statement, but we can assure you we are open to any questions regarding our team in the next weeks.
First, we want to thank every single of our 21 riders for their commitment. It was and still is a pleasure to be a part of this team.
Nevertheless, we thank all of our opponents who made this season so special and close. The fighting was hard, but remained friendly all the time.
We congratulate our fellow promoting teams and wish everyone else a succesful 2013 season.
Commiserations to the teams close behind ourselves, who would have deserved a PT spot at least as much as we do, and to all relegating squads as well.
To wrap the season up, we are incredibly satisfied with the performance of Daniele Bennati and Pierre Rolland, who both presented our jersey on the top step of the podium more than we expected.
Surprise wins came from our youngsters Bar and Kelderman, our experienced Delage and Gasparotto, who did valuable work for Bennati as well, and the late season discovery Lars Croket, who did the last bit of work to secure our promotion spot.
We might remind you as well that we achieved this amazing result with more than 50 percent of our roster consisting of not maxed out riders!
Therefore and for many other reasons, we can't part with any of our riders easily.
Still, we are very aware that we can't keep all of them in off-season, as we face the difficult task of transforming our "one-trick pony" roster into an all-round lineup without too much space or money available.
We can't tell you which riders will leave us because that heavily depends on further planning and the renewal offers, but there will certainly be some youngsters and more experienced CT domestiques up for grabs.
Most probably, one or two of our sprinters will be available as well.
Let's switch our focus to our targeted riders.
Currently, we see our sprint department to be competitive enough for Pro Tour demands.
Nevertheless, we have an eye on guys like Danilo Kupfernagel and Nolan Hoffman out of the FA pool. But if you think we will gift you promising youngsters, you're wrong!
One thing we have to build from scratch is our cobbles lineup.
Further, we have lots of younger, sub-top riders on our watch list, but we prefer personal talk with their managers.
Luckily, we develop promising puncheurs and are now able to keep them in order to give them the experience on a higher level.
Therefore, we need a top puncheur to lead and mentor them as well as maybe a few better domestiques.
Sadly, there is no top puncheur as a FA so far, so we have to wait for the renewals to have an idea of who to sign. Still, there are some obvious 2nd-tier FA riders out there we closely monitor.
If noone obvious is on the market, we might not focus too much on this department because we aren't able of offering millions of transfer fees to buy a leader out of his contract.
It says a lot when Pierre Rolland is your best mountain rider.
We need to heavily increase our GT forces to stand any chance in Pro Tour, and there are a lot of capable riders up for grabs this year.
Just like any team in this game, we fell in love with the idea of signing Andy Schleck or Vincenzo Nibali. Further, Stefan Denifl is amongst our most wanted riders.
Due to the high wages they require, we might have to look for domestiques with existing contracts, but we will search the more personal contact for them as well.
This might very well be the deciding factor if we want to stay PT.
What we can tell you though is that through all departments, we will try to keep our squad especially focused on Germany, France and the BeNeLux.
So this was a (probably too thorough) outlook for our future roster.
We don't want to forget to mention that due to our huge success, both of our sponsors Puma and SAP are happy to prolong their contracts, and thus we will look exactly the same in Pro Tour like we did one division lower.
So there is only one more thing to add.
If you read the previous paragraphs, you are well aware of the fact we need good riders left and right to stay in Pro Tour.
We always said we were on a 3-year-plan.
2012: sign talented riders and develop
2013: loan them out and sign some top riders
2014: get nearly maxed riders back and promote to PT
We all know this turned out completely different.
All of us will give their very best to make the best out of the situation, but first, we feel incredibly honoured to be amongst the best 20 teams in the world, and that in our second year.
We won't be sad if we relegate straight back to CT.
Our 3-year-plan would remain completely unchanged, and even now we're PT, our primary goal is to be there in 2014 again, under whichever cirumstances.
Thank you.
cio93, manager of Team Puma - SAPEdited by cio93 on 12-10-2012 20:14
Seeing your loaning out policy for next year rumors have started up in the Netherlands. The new (P)CT outfit of Team UPC - BI is said to have an interest in Kelderman and several other riders. Seeing Keldermans age and experience, the PT might come a season too early for him, so a transfer or a loan deal seem to be a definite possibility for the young dutch talent.
While we appreciate the interest in Wilco Kelderman and are always willing to support new teams, we have statistics present proving that despite his age, Pro Tour is the right place to be for him now.
To clarify the whole situation right away:
We feel the same goes for Jocelyn Bar, Jetse Bol, Nacer Bouhanni, Tom Dumoulin and Mario Vogt.
Negotiations regarding them will be very difficult, but nevertheless, we are in a situation where we can't allow to ignore any interest.
If we prolong their contracts, which is not sure yet, we will happily listen to any offer regarding Mike Aaron Egger, Olivier Le Gac and Jasha Sütterlin as we think they won't benefit from either division this upcoming season.
In our current season plans, whether Daniel Klemme and Karel Hnik will be part of our team after renewals is difficult to predict.
We are informed that there might be a ruling which could prevent us from negotiating with them, and to some extent, it depends on how optimistic we are on staying PT next year.
If they stay with us, they definately need to be loaned out.
Simply Red Bull understands Puma's reluctance to part with some of its younger riders.
However wa can also see from your press releases that you realise there is a general lack of climbing ability in your squad. Veteran Spanish rider Daniel Moreno could be available in a part exchange deal. The rider we are interested in is Jocelyn Bar.
Moreno is a very interesting rider indeed, and this is definately a good swap deal we consider carefully.
We keep that in mind and come back to you later.
