Visit Malta committed with cycling

One more year, and based on the collaboration between Malta and the Alberto Contador Foundation, two cyclists from the island, Jacob Schembri and Luke Borg, will train with the Polti Kometa under-23 team in their training camps.

The link, which began during the 2022 Giro d’Italia and is now in its third year, is based on the projection of Maltese cyclists and the promotion of Malta as a tourist destination of choice. In order to reinforce the close relationship with Visit Malta, the professional team visited the country last October for the always important first pre-season training camp ahead of the campaign that has already started. A visit that Ivan Basso, manager of the team, recently relived with the Hon. Minister of Tourism, Bartolo Clayton, at the first official meeting of the 2024 season. A meeting that was used to plan the coming months and visits of the team to the island, as well as to deliver the jersey of the structure of this 2024.

Meanwhile, in Spain, both Schembri and Borg continued their training with the team as planed. Both riders are following a detailed development programme with the trainers as well as the rest of the team. This work has resulted, for example, in Schembri’s participation in the last World Cycling Championships in Glasgow representing Malta in the under-23 category.

“Teammates ride very hard, so we train very well with them, road are very good and the hotel is very good, so we can´t complain about nothing”, explains Luke Borg, referring to his experience during the training camp.

“The training is very demanding here, the teammates have a very good level. In Malta we train well with the trainers, but here training is of a higher quality. Even if the weather is not so good, everything is great: staff, mechanics, colleagues…”, said Schembri at the end of the days together.

Malta is not a country with an historical tradition on cycling, but, thanks to this collaboration, it’s starting to grow a passion. More cyclists and most importantly, more respect to cyclists are being seen on the island.

In addition to training with their team-mates during the training camp, the team’s coaches follow the Maltese riders’ in detail. In Schembri’s case, Antonio Campos works closely with him. “Nowadays it is relatively easy given the technology that exists for the planning and analysis of the training that we use in the team (TrainingPeaks and WKO5). It’s always important to be with the riders in person at certain times of the season as you can get to know them better and build more confidence, but most of them have a coach who lives far away and the training methodologies have been adapted,” says Campos, who has lived very closely with the rider-cyclist relationship that has changed in recent years. “Like most of the guys who go to a team outside their country, at the beginning it is a bit difficult, but now they are totally integrated as they go to the same training camps with the team. They have the same dynamic of routines and work as the rest of the teammates and, in addition, they all train together as a group every day, each one with their individualized intensities”, explains Campos about the integration of the foreign cyclists, and in this case Maltese riders, in the team.