Juan Jose Lobato joins Team Euskaltel-Euskadi for 2013-14
After marking his professional debut with Team Andalucia in 2011, Juan Jose Lobato has taken a huge leap by signing up with the World Tour side, Team Euskaltel-Euskadi for two seasons.
The 23-year-old previously rode for the Amateur sides, Team Cueva El Soplao in 2009 and Team Andalucía-Cajasur in 2010 before joining the professional-continental side in 2011.
His performance in the past two seasons is good enough to earn him a World Tour spot and is optimistic on taking his performance to the next level in the coming seasons.
The cyclist finished 7th at the Trofeo Mallorca, 10th at the Clasica de Almeria and occupied top podium position at the Circuit de Getxo 2011.
He bagged stages at the Tour of Chile (stage 2 and stage 10) and claimed the opening stage at the Tour of Qinghai Lake 2012.
One hurdle that could have made things difficult for Lobato, is the fact that he is still under contract with Team Andalucia for two more seasons and needs approval from his current Team Manager before signing any other contract.
However, to make things easier for Juan, Team Andalucia Manager Antonio Cabello has noted that he will not stop the cyclist from riding at the top level of the sport and has already granted him permission to proceed with Team Euskaltel-Euskadi.
“We couldn’t close the door on Juan José going to a top level team like Euskaltel,” he told EFE News Agency.
The Spanish team is still looking for at least eight new cyclists as announced in a press conference on Monday.
However, the team’s continuation at the World Tour level is yet to be decided as it is currently competing with Team Lampre-ISD, Team Ag2r-La Mondiale, Team Argos Shimano and other teams.
In order to fulfill the UCI criteria, the team has compromised with its ideology by including the foreign riders in the season ahead.
All the cyclists in the team since its foundation in 1994 are either Basque or have raced for Basque teams at the amateur level.
The team had to let many of its old cyclists go, in order to make room for the foreign riders and Amets Txurruka is amongst those who could not secure a contract for the season ahead even after spending a period of six-years with the team.
Txurruka became victim of the UCI points and the team had no other option but to terminate his services for the 2013 season.
“It is true that I did not expect my departure and I was a bit surprised that I had to leave the team,” the cyclist shared his disappointment with Marca.
“I had no [UCI] points and he wasn't counting on me. He was within his rights because my contract was also coming to an end”.
“I wouldn't mind resuming my career in Italy because I had some really good years there, but also to be with Caja Rural would be a very good option,” he said.
Slovenians Jure Kocjan of Team Type 1 and Robert Vrecer Team Vorarlberg, Germans Steffen Radochla Team NSP-Ghost and André Schulze of Team NetApp, Russian Alexandr Serebryakov of Team Type 1 and Portuguese rider Ricardo Mestre of Team Carmim-Prio are all
the new signings as reported by Biciciclismo earlier.
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