World Tour's opener Tour Down Under in Oceania and America's Tour de San Luis will feature the team's first season outing as they try to offer their initial success to the fans.
Australia and Argentina will be the venues for the awaited competitive début of the Movistar Team in just ten days’ time. The Tour Down Under -January 18-23- in Oceania, and more precisely its preface -the Cancer Council Classic, taking place two days earlier-, will witness the historical, opening outing of the Movistar Team. At the same time, the Tour de San Luis will be receiving another group in blue, which comes on American turf with the intention to bring the first moments of joy to thousands of fans already following the development of the Movistar Team.
The Santos Tour Down Under, the most important race of the Southern hemisphere, will be holding its usual prologue on Sunday 16th, as the Cancer Council Classic includes an urban circuit in the streets of Adelaide. Two days later, the time for the opening race of the 2011 World Tour will be coming: six stages and nearly 800 kilometers across the state will bring the first winning names of the year. José Luis Arrieta will be showing up for his first time as Movistar team sports director as head of an expedition where Chente García Acosta, Iván Gutiérrez, David López, Ángel Madrazo, Luis Pasamontes and team’s sprinters Fran Ventoso and José Joaquín Rojas will be the ones on wheels, the latter two taking their chances on the predictable bunch sprints in the Australian race.
In turn, the Tour de San Luis, the most important stagerace in South America, is the course chosen by the team to take their first racing days in the continent. A beautiful challenge from January 17th to 23rd, the Argentinean tour has a route full of hectic points; under the lead by directeur sportif José Luis Jaimerena, Movistar Team will compete for their first ever time on South American soil with a block composed by Xavi Tondo, Mauricio Soler, Pablo Lastras, Fran Pérez, Javier Iriarte and Chilean Carlos Oyarzun, who will take Andrey Amador’s place as the Costa Rican is still recovering from attack by thugs suffered days ago while training in his home country. The 2011 Tour de San Luis will be presenting a very mountainous profile as two out of seven stages (the Mirador del Potrero’s one in the 2nd stage and the Mirador del Sol, where Tondo took the stage victory in 2009, in the 5th day of racing) finish atop the mountains. A 20-kilometer individual time trial will be the other decisive point.
Movistar Team – Tour Down Under (AUS): Chente García Acosta, Iván Gutiérrez, David López, Ángel Madrazo, Luis Pasamontes, José Joaquín Rojas, Fran Ventoso.
Movistar Team – Tour de San Luis (ARG): Javier Iriarte, Pablo Lastras, Carlos Oyarzun (CHI), Fran Pérez, Mauricio Soler (COL), Xavi Tondo.