Team launch in Madrid
WorldTour men's team adds Mikel Landa to its roster for next season; all-new, attractive Endura kit also to be worn by UCI Women's Team starting next year.
35 riders will be part of the two Movistar Team rosters (men’s and women’s teams) which Telefónica presented Thursday at a Distrito Telefónica’s main Auditorium filled with people for the launch of the Blues’ 2018 season. Led by Nairo Quintana, Alejandro Valverde –very well recovered from his crash in the 2017 Tour de France– and Mikel Landa, Spain’s biggest hopeful and the most remarkable signing by the Navarra-based outfit for next season, the 25 riders of the men’s team mixed at the stands with the 10 members of the new women’s team Movistar is launching in 2018.
Both squads will share the same technical support and wear the same Endura kit the squad managed by Eusebio Unzué has received for the next season, consisting of a brighter blue jersey, in compliance with Movistar’s new corporate image, and a more traditional, dark-blue bibshort. During the event, the new Canyon bike livery for 2018 was unveiled with use of both augmented and virtual reality, a design both teams will also share. The Movistar Team, supported by Telefónica as title sponsor for an eighth consecutive year and winners of four UCI WorldTour titles in the last five years, will attempt to round up the treble of Grand Tour wins in the Tour de France, following success by Nairo Quintana in the Giro d’Italia (2014) and the Vuelta a España (2016).
Carlos López-Blanco, Telefónica’s Global Public Affairs and Regulations Director, commented on the squad’s expectations for 2018: “Telefónica celebrates -just as in every season- enjoying such a successful tie with the Movistar Team. This year, the men’s team will be adding young, interesting values to an already strong, winning team, with expert leaders, such as Quintana and Valverde, now together with a big hopeful like Mikel Landa. Then there’s the new women’s team, another initiative from Telefónica to foster inclusion and gender equality, which will cover some of the most prestigious events in the world. Combined with that, Telefónica aspires to keep bringing people to cycling, with actions like the #RodamosJuntos campaign last year in the Vuelta, as well as helping the team with new ways of technology at their service.”
Together with Big Data, already used last year, Telefónica will bring new technologies to the team by use of the Internet of Things, which will favour real-time monitoring of training sessions combined with cloud data storage. IoT will be deployed through ‘trackers’: small devices added to every bike, helmet or jersey, which will make possible to follow every ride, which will also improve the riders’ safety. In turn, data from the bikes’ Garmin cycle computers will be stored at a cloud owned by the team with advanced technologies to study and plan on such figures.
Use of technology will be completed by fleet management of the vehicles the Movistar Team owns (8 cars, 2 trucks, 2 buses), tracking driving schedules, journeys or any required maintenance. Also, and as a brandnew initiative for 2018, a unified communications and collaboration system will be deployed to make easier for several of the Movistar Team’s stakeholders (riders, staff, sponsors) to work in an easier and more secure way.
The Movistar Team continues to be a reference in the digital sphere, strongly established as the 2nd most followed squad in the WorldTour with nearly 1.5 million social media fans. Profiting from their change of colours, the team will also unveil a new website (www.movistarteam.com) on January 1st.
The men’s team will kick off their racing scheduled in mid January at the Tour Down Under in Australia, while the new women’s team will make their official debut at the Setmana Valenciana in late February. Both rosters will complete in excess of 300 racing days across more than twenty countries.
MOVISTAR TEAM – 2018 ROSTERS
Men’s Team: Andrey Amador (CRC), Winner Anacona (COL), Jorge Arcas, Carlos Barbero, Daniele Bennati (ITA), Carlos Betancur (COL), Nuno Bico (POR), Richard Carapaz (ECU), Héctor Carretero, Jaime Castrillo, Víctor de la Parte, Imanol Erviti, Rubén Fernández, Mikel Landa, Nelson Oliveira (POR), Antonio Pedrero, Dayer Quintana (COL), Nairo Quintana (COL), José Joaquín Rojas, Jaime Rosón, Eduardo Sepúlveda (ARG), Marc Soler, Jasha Süttlerlin (GER), Rafa Valls, Alejandro Valverde. Sports directors: José Luis Arrieta, Chente García Acosta, José Luis Jaimerena, Pablo Lastras.
Women’s Team: Aude Biannic (FRA), Mavi García, Alicia González, Malgorzata Jasinska (POL), Lorena Llamas, Eider Merino, Rachel Neylan (AUS), Lourdes Oyarbide, Gloria Rodríguez, Alba Teruel. Sports director: Jorge Sanz.
New signings for 2018 are marked in italics.