The 42nd season of the ‘blue’ team begins
A virtual event, with connections from Madrid and Almería, served to present a ‘telephone’ staff larger than ever -43 cyclists among its female and male teams- and as a tribute to the press, a great vehicle to transmit the team’s efforts in the most difficult year for the sport.
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Movistar Team celebrated this Thursday the presentation of its teams for the 2021 season, the forty-second of the oldest and most reputed team in the international peloton, with a fully digital approach. Through connections with the Michael Robinson Study of TBS / Movistar + in Tres Cantos (Madrid) and with the concentration of the team that has taken place until today in Almería, the 43 men and women who make up the telephone team gave the starting signal to a campaign that is scheduled to start in February.
Telefónica, the main sponsor of the Abarca Sports structure for the last eleven years and a great promoter of sport and culture in our country, supported the event with the presence of José María Álvarez Pallete, Executive President of the company: “The Movistar Team is much more than a cycling team for Telefónica. Not only does it represent our values of teamwork, improvement and effort, but for years it has become an icon of equality in sport and further proof of our commitment to sustainable development and our support for Spanish sport ”. “For us, the Movistar Team is a demonstration that when we are connected, we are capable of achieving everything we set out to do,” he added.
Eusebio Unzué stressed that “for us, it is a privilege to continue to have the support of Telefónica after all these years, and even more so after such a complicated 2020, in which we have felt that support closer than ever in moments that have been nothing simple for sports. We want to continue giving them back that trust and continue to deepen the changes that this team is following in the coming years, which we trust will lead us in the future to continue fighting for great success with them ”.
At the event, the role that the press, as an essential vehicle for the communication of cycling together with social media, played in a particularly difficult 2020 for the entire world of sport was thanked.
The event served to publicise the new faces of a very reinforced team. The Dutch rider Annemiek van Vleuten stands out among them, current European champion and whose world titles and successes in the most varied and prestigious races have made her the best cyclist in the female peloton in recent years. Her arrival, together with that of the complete North American Leah Thomas and the promising Sara Martín and Emma Norsgaard, represents a great leap in the aspirations of the group led by Sebastián Unzué, Pablo Lastras and Jorge Sanz. In total, 14 cyclists will take part, for the second consecutive year, in the UCI Women’s WorldTour, the highest world category.
In the men’s team there are five novelties. Two SUVs with room for progression such as Gonzalo Serrano (ESP) and Gregor Mühlberger (AUT); the promising Abner González, the first Puerto Rican worldtour cyclist and first telephone man born in the 2000s; Iván García Cortina, great Spanish hope for the classic cobblestone; and Miguel Ángel López (COL), podium in Giro and La Vuelta and one of the best climbers in the world, reinforce a team that will once again trust two of the most renowned Spaniards, Marc Soler and Enric Mas, and in an Alejandro Valverde who he will reach 41 years on the bike in a legendary trajectory.
The event allowed, in the same way, to announce two other great novelties. ‘The Less Thought Day’, a documentary series that portrays the ins and outs of professional cycling with unprecedented transparency and realism, will feature a second season, focused on Movistar Team’s 2020, which will premiere next spring. On the other hand, the telephone team announced the imminent launch of the Movistar Team Challenge, a virtual challenge in collaboration with Global Cycling Network and Zwift that will cover the next month and a half and will enable ten cyclists -five men and five women- to be in 2021 the first to officially defend the team colours in the Zwift Racing League, the world’s premier e-sports competition on two wheels.
All images (c): Photo Gomez Sport