Viatcheslav Ekimov joins Team Katusha as the new Manager
Viatcheslav Ekimov will be the team’s news Manager effective immediately as announced by the team earlier this week.
It was reported earlier that the current Team Katusha General Manager Hans-Michael Holczer might leave the team after having a bitter argument with the team’s top cyclist Joaquim Rodriguez.
“The known Russian specialist, the three times Olympic champion Viatcheslav Ekimov who is also the adviser of Igor Makarov, president of Russian Cycling Federation and the chairman of Board of Directors of MGK 'ITERA', is appointed to the post of general
manager of Katusha Team as well as youth teams Itera-Katusha,” a press release stated.
The team mentioned no specific reason but it is pretty clear that the increase in tension between Rodriguez and Holczer over the 2013 contract resulted in his resignation from the job.
“Right now I can only confirm that I left Katusha last Friday,” Holczer told Cyclingnews in an email.
“This decision had nothing to do with the fact that I reminded Rodriguez of his contractual obligations. No definitive decision over my future in cycling has yet been made”.
Holczer joined the Russian team back in 2012 replacing Andre Tchmil and was expected to stay with the side, at least by the end of 2014.
However, keeping him on board could have resulted in an unhappy Rodriguez and the team just could not afford that.
The Spaniard currently leads the UCI World Tour Elite Men rankings with as many as 692 UCI points in his bag.
He overcame the 2012 Tour de France winner, Bradley Wiggins with a huge lead of 91 points after his most recent victory at the last European World Tour race of the season, the Giro di Lombardia.
The 33-year-old finished second overall at the Giro d’Italia (two stages), Tour of the Basque Country (three stages) and third at the Vuelta a Espana (three stages) and sixth overall at the Tirreno-Adriatico 2012(one stage).
It is only because of Joaquim’s UCI points that the Russian team currently holds the second overall position at the UCI World Tour team’s rankings.
If his 692 points are subtracted from the team’s total of 1273, it will be dropped down to 13th position with only five teams below.
It will be interesting to see if the team manages to continue its winning momentum under the new management in 2013.
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