Daniel Viegas will join the continental Polartec-Kometa in 2019
Portugal’s Daniel Viegas (Faro, 5 January 1998) will defend the colours of Polartec-Kometa for the coming season. The Algarve rider, who has completed his second season at the Alberto Contador Foundation’s U23 team in 2018, becomes the first reinforcement of the Madrid team for his second season in the continental category. A promotion that rewards the enormous work of the Lusitano runner, a silent work, with little media coverage, and which highlights the project’s commitment to the training of cyclists, beyond a mere list of awards or the coldness of the results.
Viegas, winner of the Vuelta a Besaya or the Vuelta a Loulé in Portugal as a youngster with Club Ciclista Bairrada, has highlighted these two courses for his immeasurable work on behalf of his teammates. The victory of Juan Pedro López in the last edition of the Vuelta al Bidasoa, to give an example, has behind him in a high percentage the work of supporting the Portuguese, always ready to contribute his grain of sand.
“I’m very happy to make the professional team. It is a way of showing that you can also achieve professionalism through hard work, without winning races. If I’ve worked for my team-mates in the amateur category now, I’m sure I won’t go up next year to win races. I know very well what I’m going to do. But all I want to do is be the best. If I have to win, I want to be the best. And if I have to work, I want to be the best at working. Whatever I do, it doesn’t matter: I want to be the best at what I have to do,” says an enthusiastic Daniel Viegas.
Rafa Díaz Justo from Toledo has been its sports director during these two seasons: “When he joined our team he was one of the best junior riders in his country. From the first moment one of the things that impressed us the most was his way of running, his intelligence, his way of working within the team…. He is incombustible in his work, millimetric in his work, a cyclist with many boards who has contributed and helped a lot in this learning to all his companions. Besides, there’s their potential. We think that in the professional category he is going to do more beautiful things than in the amateur field, which is not very pleasant for this “dirty” work, not very visible but necessary. In these two years of work we have been able to enjoy a professional runner in the body of an amateur. Dani is possibly one of the best gregarious of the Spanish amateur field”.
“It is a very important bet because he is, or will be, the first foreign rider who, having been through our U23 team, makes the jump to the continental. Daniel is a rider who has been aiming for a great future since he was young and won the Vuelta al Besaya, also making an exhibition in favour of his colleague Joao Almeida and when he won the Vuelta a Portugal. We were there with the juniors and almost 80% of the race was done by him,” points out Félix García Casas, the Foundation’s team manager. “Viegas is a rider with great potential, but above all he is a great team rider. With us he has done two years of meticulous and exhaustive work on behalf of his colleagues. He is a very complete rider, a very good time trial rider, he passes the mid-mountain when he is fit and I would also like to highlight his great experience: it seems he has been in the U23 field for many years when it comes to working and controlling the group”.
(automatic translation, sorry for mistakes)
