Junior team meets for the first time with sights set on 2025
Last week the junior team met for the first time to start preparing for an exciting 2025 season. The cyclists gathered with the staff at the Hotel Princesa Eboli, the team’s usual meeting place, to take measurements, hand out equipment from brands such as SIDI and Gsport, which once again supports the squad, explain the rules and, in short, explain to all the new riders how the Alberto Contador Foundation’s formation project works.
The meeting was attended by members of the management staff, parents of the cyclists, as well as the riders themselves and the team manager Francisco Contador.
The team will be made up of 15 cyclists in 2025. The squad will be divided, in a very homogeneous way, between eight riders of first year in the category and seven of second year. Matteo Compagnoni, Óscar Orts and Nacho Sánchez are the three familiar faces that remain from the 2024 squad in a very renewed team. Anxo Delgado, Iván Estevez, Adrian Martinez, Aitor Martinez, Francisco Moscoso, Javier Muñoz, Rodrigo Sanchez and Jorge Torrijos come to the category with the team from the after a great U16 period. Jaume Barceló, Ricardo Giner, Gonçalo Rodrigues and Leo Ucher will complete their junior stage.
Present at the first meeting with the new members of the junior structure was Fran Contador, general manager of the team: ‘It is the first meeting of the team for next year where we explain very quickly how we are going to work in the season, we explain the calendar forecast, we take their measurements and we take advantage of the presence of parents to explain the philosophy and the way the team works and the importance of studies in this period of formation,’ he explains. ‘There are 15 cyclists next year, three of whom maintain on the squad from 2024, so it’s almost a renewed team. The idea is to give the project a greater presence outside Spain, this being the first year of a big change expected in the category,’ he adds.
Rafael Díaz Justo, the longest-serving sports director in the project, explains what happened at the meeting: ‘It was a very intense morning, but it left a good taste in our mouths with the presentation of the Alberto Contador Foundation project, team, history and sponsors. Together with Carlos Barredo we presented the physical preparation and together with the mechanics the measurements on the bike. We explained the idea and the pretension for 2025 and the future with the change we expect in the category. The competitions will be at the highest level in Spain and abroad. By making this big change in the team we will also change the way we work’.
Isaac Cantón, director of the junior team was also present to meet his new pupils: ‘Fran presented in depth the project that surrounds the whole team; the Plaza Eboli school, Bicicletas para la vida, Aurum… also the staff that will be linked to the junior team. We talked to them about how we are going to work and the expected schedule’, he comments. ‘We have half a first year team and half a second year riders team with whom we will try to become a reference team again, racing in the best races in Spain and going to France or Belgium, for example’, he concludes.
