A cycling team is a group of cyclists who join a team or are acquired and train together to compete in bicycle races whether amateur or professional – and the supporting personnel. Cycling teams are most important in road bicycle racing, which is a team sport, but collaboration between team members is also important in track cycling and cyclo-cross.
While riders form the core of a team, a top team also has personnel who support the racing and training. These include
There are also officers for sponsorship, marketing, and communication.
There are different levels of commitment between the riders and the team. Amateur teams range from a collection of riders who identify themselves as a team to those who provide riders with equipment and money. A top-level professional team is registered with the Union Cycliste Internationale, which enforces rules and a points system for professional competition.
Team members have different specializations. Climbing specialists grind away on hard inclines; sprinters save their energy for sprints for points and position; time trialists keep speed high over great distances.
Each team has a leader and captain, generally reckoned as the team's most experienced rider. The leaders have the most media exposure and the best chance of winning races. The rest of the team's members are domestiques, or secondary riders, who shield the leader from opponents and deliver food and drinks to him. However, any team member is allowed to go for a stage win.
In one-day races, one or several leaders are chosen according to demands of the race. In stage races, teams focus on different goals. For example, during the 2005 Tour de France teams such as Discovery Channel or T-Mobile focused on the general classification while other teams tried to win stages or one of the other classifications. In the 2004 Tour de France, Quick-Step–Davitamon helped Richard Virenque win the mountains classification while Lotto–Domo helped Robbie McEwen win the points classification. Smaller teams may simply get riders into a long breakaway to get coverage on television. Most professional teams have 10-20 riders.
Teams are generally sponsored in exchange for advertising on clothing and other endorsements. Sponsorship ranges from small businesses to international companies.
The Tour de France between 1930 and the late 1950s was for national teams which carried no prominent commercial advertising.
The Union Cycliste Internationale is the world governing body for sports cycling and oversees international competitive cycling events. The UCI is based in Aigle, Switzerland.
In road bicycle racing, a domestique is a rider who works for the benefit of their team and leader, rather than trying to win the race. In French, domestique translates as "servant". The use of the term dates back to 1911, although such riders had existed before then.
Road bicycle racing is the cycle sport discipline of road cycling, held primarily on paved roads. Road racing is the most popular professional form of bicycle racing, in terms of numbers of competitors, events and spectators. The two most common competition formats are mass start events, where riders start simultaneously and race to a set finish point; and time trials, where individual riders or teams race a course alone against the clock. Stage races or "tours" take multiple days, and consist of several mass-start or time-trial stages ridden consecutively.
Team TotalEnergies is a professional road bicycle racing team that competes as a UCI ProTeam in UCI Continental Circuits races, and UCI World Tour races when invited as a wild card entry. In previous years, the team was known as Brioches La Boulangère, Bonjour, Bouygues Télécom, and Bbox Bouygues Telecom and Europcar. The 2015 season was the last under the sponsorship of Europcar. The team has been sponsored by Direct Énergie since 2016.
Visma–Lease a Bike is a Dutch professional bicycle racing team, successor of the former Rabobank. The team consists of four sections: ProTeam, Women's Team, Development Team, and cyclo-cross.
Cervélo Cycles is an American manufacturer of racing and track bicycles. Cervélo uses CAD, computational fluid dynamics, and wind tunnel testing at a variety of facilities including the San Diego Air and Space Technology Center, in California, US, to aid its designs. Frame materials include carbon fibre. Cervélo currently makes 5 series of bikes: the C series and R series of road bikes, the latter featuring multi-shaped, "Squoval" frame tubes; the S series of road bikes and P series of triathlon/time trial bikes, both of which feature airfoil shaped down tubes; and the T series of track bikes. In professional competition, cyclists have ridden Cervélo bicycles to victory in all three of road cycling's grand tours: the Tour de France; the Giro d'Italia; and the Vuelta a España.
Dietrich "Didi" Thurau is a retired German professional road bicycle racer. His biggest career achievements include winning the one-day classic, Liège–Bastogne–Liège, his home country's Deutschland Tour and surprising the field at the 1977 Tour de France by capturing four stages and holding the yellow jersey as leader of the general classification from the prologue for 15 days. Thurau did win the young rider classification although he lost the overall lead to eventual winner Bernard Thévenet.
Liv Racing TeqFind was a women's professional cycling team, based in the Netherlands. The title sponsor is Liv, a sub-brand of Taiwanese bicycle manufacturer Giant Bicycles. The team's directeur sportif is Eric van den Boom. Riders for Liv Racing compete in the UCI Women's World Tour and other Elite Women's Cycling events throughout the world.
Mathias Frank is a Swiss former road bicycle racer, who rode professionally between 2008 and 2021 for the Gerolsteiner, BMC Racing Team, IAM Cycling and AG2R Citroën Team teams. A strong climber, Frank finished 8th overall in the 2015 Tour de France, and won a breakaway stage in the 2016 Vuelta a España.
Rock Racing was a cycling team founded in 2007 by Michael Ball. The team is affiliated with Ball's Rock & Republic clothing line. Rock Racing received media attention for hiring outcasts in the sport, including those tainted by performance-enhancing drug scandals. The team's "bad boy image" was furthered by the design of the team kits, and its motto was "Here to stay" which may have served to incite the anti-doping efforts of the time.
Cervélo TestTeam is a former professional cycling team, whose license was held in Switzerland by the cycling management company Cycling United Racing. The team's title sponsor was Cervélo, a Canadian manufacturer of bicycle frames that previously exclusively supplied CSC–Saxo Bank. They competed in 2010 as a UCI Professional Continental team, but folded after the season.
The 2014 Tour de France was the 101st edition of the race, one of cycling's Grand Tours. The 3,660.5-kilometre (2,274.5 mi) race included 21 stages, starting in Leeds, Yorkshire, United Kingdom, on 5 July and finishing on the Champs-Élysées in Paris on 27 July. The race also visited Belgium for part of a stage. Vincenzo Nibali of the Astana team won the overall general classification by more than seven minutes, the biggest winning margin since 1997. By winning, he had acquired victories in all Grand Tours. Jean-Christophe Péraud placed second, with Thibaut Pinot (FDJ.fr) third.
The 2015 Tour de France was the 102nd edition of the Tour de France, one of cycling's Grand Tours. The 3,360.3 km (2,088 mi)-long race consisted of 21 stages, starting on 4 July in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and concluding on 26 July with the Champs-Élysées stage in Paris. A total of 198 riders from 22 teams entered the race. The overall general classification was won by Chris Froome of Team Sky, with the second and third places taken by Movistar Team riders Nairo Quintana and Alejandro Valverde, respectively.
The 2016 Tour de France was the 103rd edition of the Tour de France, one of cycling's Grand Tours. The 3,529 km (2,193 mi)-long race consisted of 21 stages, starting on 2 July in Mont Saint-Michel, Normandy, and concluding on 24 July with the Champs-Élysées stage in Paris. A total of 198 riders from 22 teams entered the race. The overall general classification was won by Chris Froome of Team Sky, with the second and third places were taken by Romain Bardet and Nairo Quintana, respectively.
The 2017 Tour de France was the 104th edition of the Tour de France, one of cycling's Grand Tours. The 21-stage race took place across 3,540 km (2,200 mi), commencing with an individual time trial in Düsseldorf, Germany on 1 July, and concluding with the Champs-Élysées stage in Paris on 23 July. A total of 198 riders from 22 teams entered the race. The overall general classification won by Chris Froome of Team Sky, his third consecutive victory and fourth overall. Rigoberto Urán (Cannondale–Drapac) and Romain Bardet finished second and third, respectively.
The 2016 Tour of Oman was a road cycling stage race that took place between 16 and 21 February 2016 in Oman. It was the seventh edition of the Tour of Oman and is rated as a 2.HC race as part of the 2016 UCI Asia Tour. The previous year's champion, Rafael Valls, was not present to defend his title.
The 2017 Tour de Langkawi was the 22nd edition of an annual professional road bicycle racing stage race held in Malaysia since 1996. The race was run at the highest category apart from those races which make up the UCI World Tour, and was rated by the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) as a 2.HC race as part of the 2017 UCI Asia Tour.
The 2018 Tour de France was the 105th edition of the Tour de France, one of cycling's three Grand Tours. The 3,351 km (2,082 mi)-long race consisted of 21 stages, starting on 7 July in Noirmoutier-en-l'Île, in western France, and concluding on 29 July with the Champs-Élysées stage in Paris. A total of 176 riders from 22 teams participated in the race. The overall general classification was won by Geraint Thomas of Team Sky. Tom Dumoulin placed second, with Thomas's teammate and four-time Tour winner Chris Froome coming third.
The 2018 Giro d'Italia was the 101st edition of the Giro d'Italia, one of cycling's Grand Tour races. The race started in Jerusalem on 4 May, with a 9.7 km (6 mi) individual time trial followed by two additional stages within Israel. After a rest day, there were 18 further stages in Italy before the tour reached the finish in Rome on 27 May.
The 2019 Paris–Nice was a road cycling stage race that was held between 10 and 17 March 2019 in France. It was the 77th edition of Paris–Nice and the sixth race of the 2019 UCI World Tour. Spaniard Marc Soler was the defending champion.
