Arturo Grávalos, from La Rioja, is the first new rider for the EOLO-KOMETA Cycling Team facing the coming season

The rider Arturo Grávalos will make the jump to professionalism next season with the EOLO-KOMETA Cycling Team. The rider from La Rioja will be the first to join the Contador Foundation’s new sports project, which, together with the telecommunications company EOLO and the agri-food company KOMETA, will apply for promotion to the ProTeam category in 2021.

Grávalos, who will be 23 years old on 2 March, has competed the last two seasons in the Contador Foundation’s under-23 team, coached by Rafa Díaz Justo from Toledo. During this time he has stood out as a very versatile cyclist with special skill in the flat terrain and the mid-mountain, with a great capacity for work, with a great sense of tactics and a very offensive character.

“I’m on a cloud, I still haven’t finished believing it. After riding in Ordicia, a day or two later, Ivan Basso called me to confirm that in 2021 I was going to make the jump to professionals and at that moment I was speechless, unable to say anything and with a huge smile. It’s a childhood dream, something you’ve been chasing for all these years and now it’s coming. It is incredible. Although I am fully aware that the hard part is coming now. You have to show all that confidence in me. I’m very excited about the future,” says an exultant Arturo Grávalos.

Grávalos has already had the opportunity this season to run for the continental team. In August he was selected alongside the Asturian Edu Pérez-Landaluce to compete as a stagiaire in some races with the Kometa-Xstra Cycling Team. Grávalos was part of the team in the Tour of Hungary and also closed his season participating in the Ordiziako Klasika. In both competitions he was the protagonist of some races. In the overall final of the Magyar round he finished 27th. The future neo-professional, based in the town of Cervera del Rio Alhama, signed this year the tenth place in the Zamoran Trofeo San Jose, while in 2019 he finally finished second in the Spanish Cycling Championships held then in Murcia.

“Arturo is a cyclist who has demonstrated to us that he can have a lot of experience in professional cycling. He has great quality, is very brave and is a great companion. Returning to high competition, and at a very high level, after having to stop for months due to injuries to his hand from the road accident he suffered at the beginning of summer last year, shows what he is capable of. He has worked hard to return to a very high level. And in a very difficult season. In the races he has competed with the continental team as an apprentice he has left samples of how he is as a rider, daring and persevering”, comments Rafa Díaz Justo, director of the Kometa-Xstra Cycling Team u23.

? @flandiers (1, 2), Víctor Aguado (3), Tuba Zoltán / tdh.hu (4).

(automatic translation, sorry for mistakes)