Monument and green jersey among team's ambitious goals for 2017
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Peter Sagan won the final medal of the 2016 Worlds but it was Germany who came out on top of the medal table(Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
Peter Sagan meets his new team(Image credit: Ralph Scherzer/@BoraArgon18)
Peter Sagan and Bora manager Ralph Denk(Image credit: Ralph Scherzer/@BoraArgon18)
Peter Sagan meets his new team(Image credit: Ralph Scherzer/@BoraArgon18)
Peter Sagan wore a memorable outfit to the UCI gala at the end of the 2016 season(Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
World Champion Peter Sagan has met his future Bora-Hansgrohe teammates for the first time at a team gathering in Bavaria. The team used the occasion to outline its goals for the coming year, which include winning a Monument and the green jersey at the Tour de France.
“This team meeting was a first stepping stone to the three-year journey we take on together now,” said team manager Ralph Denk.
The gathering was more of an opportunity for the many new riders to meet their new teammates, defining team and individual goals, and to make some preliminary technical measurements. A training camp and press conference in Spain will be held in December.
“I’m really excited to take part in the first team meeting of Bora-Hansgrohe,” Sagan said in the team’s press release. “i look forward to it and I’m eager to start working towards the 2017 season. This is the beginning of a new adventure for all of us and it will be exciting for sure.”
Denk called it “the first step into a new dimension" and talked of his pride at "what we achieved as a German team, having now the UCI World Champion in our line-up".
Sports director Enrico Poitschke, meanwhile, outlined the team's ambitions for next season. “As a team our goals for 2017 are: win one of the five monuments, a top 5 GC result in two Grand Tours, win the green jersey at the Tour de France, and a top-six place in the WorldTeam ranking," he said. "These are ambitious goals, but we will work hard together with our athletes to achieve them.”
On the technical side, “We did a lot of fittings like clothing, shoes, saddles and bikes. Our primary goal was not optimisation, but more about collecting a solid data basis,” according to performance director Lars Teutenberg.
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With its expected move up to the WorldTour level, the German team will look quite different in the coming season. 14 riders from this year are returning, seven are leaving the team, and 13 news riders will be joining, eight of them following Sagan over from the outgoing Tinkoff set-up.
