Renewals went reasonably, although not entirely well for the team; we released one rider, Diego Antonio Ochoa, feeling that the money could be better put to pursuing targets in the transfer season as he is, after all, statistically our 'worst' talent, and also basically signed one rider, the Peruvian dual national champion Royner Grover Navarro, who rode as a stagiare for us last season but has now secured a full contract with the team. Elsewhere Juan Pablo Forero gets a wage increase after performing the best out of our riders during last season, and Juan Ernesto Chamorro receives a wage cut, to make him a more enticing prospect to those PT teams who might want to take him on loan (*hint hint*), but apart from a few minor cuts the status quo was largely maintained. We look forward to the transfer season with renewed optimism.
Available = We're very happy to transfer these riders out. Definitely listening to offers not for sale = We don't want to sell these riders at any price
Looking for PT loan = These two riders want to get a taste of life in the PT to try and boost them towards maxing out: Full stats below:
Fla
Mo
Hil
TT
Sta
Res
Rec
Cob
Spr
Acc
Ftr
Dow
Prl
OVL
Juan Ernesto
Chamorro
66
76
73
64
71
75
68
51
66
72
76
74
64
74
Marvin Orlando
Angarita
70
62
62
65
70
65
74
62
76
75
71
63
65
71
All other riders are available for the right price!
Now that transfers are finished, here's a quick overview of our final roster for the 2015 season.
Ins
Outs
Janier Alexis Acevedo
Free Agency
Diego Antonio Ochoa
released
Sergio Godoy
Bonsucro
Ever Rivera
sacked
Mauricio Soler
Free Agency
Cleberson Weber
Free Agency
Loaned Out
Marvin Orlando Angarita
Red Bull - Huawei
Juan Ernesto Chamorro
Red Bull - Huawei
Heiner Rodrigo Parra Bustamente
Grupo Nutresa
While what amounted to a rather quiet transfer season for us could potentially have gone better, we are nevertheless fairly pleased at the squad we have managed to assemble for the upcoming season, as we have no doubts that we will be more competitive than last year, particularly by somehow managing to discover not one but two riders from South America who prefer the hills over the mountains! One of these, Acevedo, we plan to train to become more proficient in the mountains with some of the reserves of money we had left over from failed deals.
We are also very grateful to Red Bull and Nutresa for taking on some of our riders, who need to race in a higher division to gain some experience. We expect Chamorro in particular to come back a very strong rider indeed, if we're still in CT by that time he should dominate the competition! Heiner Parra was loaned out as we realised fairly late on during the transfer season that if he stayed with us for 2015, even maxing out race days, he would end up at 3.97 XP, which would be a shame, so our many thanks to Scorchio and Nutresa for taking him on for a season in the PCT!
With the loaning out of Angarita, following Chamorro to Red Bull, we have temporarily lost our star cobbler, and so the mantle of Alpina Star Cobbler passes to Gilber Zurita, with a magnificent 58 cobble stat - so good that it's better than Cancellara!
After last season where we made several unsuccessful forays into the world of C1 racing, this year we will visit only one C1 race, our only home race - Colombian Venteaux, after the sad demise of the Clásico RCN. With a squad that is reasonably strong in mountains, hills and sprints, we are able to compete in pretty much all C2 races (apart from the cobbles obviously) and so see no reason why we shouldn't dedicate all our other racedays apart from C1 and C2HC races to C2 races. Our race day distribution is quite skewed towards the middle of the season, as one might perhaps expect, but it does mean that the first three months of the season are rather quiet, with just five races across those three months.
Our race day continent distribution is as follows:
Europe
35
Asia
34
America
22
Africa
12
Oceania
5
Predictions are rolling in but aren't quite finished yet as I speak, so a short update detailing how we are rated by others will follow shortly.
Alpina Productos Alimenticios
Sergio Godoy
