Manuela Fundación’s offer, Worlds update, Lampaert renews: Daily News Digest
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Hello again, CyclingTips readers.
We roll into the weekend with an update in the ever-intriguing Manuela Fundación/Mitchelton-Scott saga, as well as news on plans for 2020 Road Worlds.
According to AS, the Manuela Fundación has offered €10 million for the Mitchelton-Scott WorldTour license. If you’ve been following the story thus far, you’ll know that the Manuela Fundación agreed earlier this month to buy the company that runs a variety of operations for the squad and manages a wide array of team assets—but did not purchase the WorldTour license itself. As of yet, that €10-million offer to buy the license has reportedly not received a response.
In other news, Worlds looks set to go ahead in Switzerland after all. Reports emerged in May that Worlds could be moved to the Middle East, potentially in the United Arab Emirates or Qatar, amid coronavirus concerns, but organizers said on Friday that they were moving forward with plans for Aigle-Martigny Worlds as Switzerland eases lockdown restrictions.
Read on for more …
Dane Cash
News Editor
What’s news
| Report: Manuela Fundación offers €10 million for WorldTour license
AS reports that Francisco Huertas, the Spanish businessman who runs the Manuela Fundación with his wife María Angustias González, made an offer of €10 million to buy Mitchelton-Scott’s WorldTour license from team owner Gerry Ryan on Thursday.
The news is the latest development in the Manuela Fundación/Mitchelton-Scott saga, which has offered quite a few twists and turns since Mitchelton-Scott first announced two weeks ago that it was becoming Team Manuela Fundación. Within a week, however, team owner Gerry Ryan announced that the deal would not be moving forward, an announcement that caught the people over at the Manuela Fundación by surprise. CyclingTips understands that the initial deal was struck by Mitchelton-Scott general manager Shayne Bannan without fully consulting Ryan.
It has since emerged that the Manuela Fundación had apparently agreed to buy Bannan’s New Global Cycling Service, which runs a variety of operations for the squad and manages a wide array of team assets—but does not actually own the team license, which is owned by Ryan.
In interviews over the past week, representatives of the Manuela Fundación have expressed their intent to move forward with their planned acquisition of Mitchelton-Scott; Thursday’s news of a €10 million offer to secure the license is certainly a clear sign of that intent. According to AS, the offer has not received a response as of yet.
| Worlds set to go ahead in Switzerland as planned
The 2020 UCI Road World Championships are set to move forward in September in Switzerland as planned, organizers announced on Friday.
Friday’s update comes after months of uncertainty over whether the Swiss towns of Aigle and Martigny would ultimately host Road Worlds as planned amid coronavirus concerns and subsequent lockdown restrictions. Reports emerged in May that Worlds could be moved to the Middle East as a possible alternative.
With Switzerland scaling back lockdown restrictions, however, organizers have now confirmed that they are moving forward as planned to hold Aigle-Martigny Worlds from September 20 to 27.
| Lampaert extends with Deceuninck-Quick-Step
Yves Lampaert will ride on with Deceuninck-Quick-Step through 2022, the team announced on Friday.
“It’s nice to feel Patrick [Lefevere, team manager] and the team putting their trust in me!” Lampaert said in a statement. “This definitely gives me an extra boost for the remainder of the season, once it will restart. I can now go to the upcoming races with a clear mind.”
Lamapert, who has been with teh team since 2015, has developed into a key member of Deceuninck’s Classics squad in recent years, winning back-to-back editions of Dwars door Vlaanderen in 2017 and 2018 and finishing on the podium at Paris-Roubaix last year. He also counts a Belgian national road title and a Vuelta a España stage victory on his career palmares.
| Yates joins Nippo Delko One Provence in coaching role
Former pro Sean Yates has joined French Pro Continental squad Nippo Delko One Provence as a coach, the team has announced.
Since his retirement from the pro peloton, Yates has spent time as a sports director at teams like Discovery, Astana, Sky, and Tinkoff-Saxo.
| Cycling Tips
Every so often, we at CyclingTips will hear from readers who want more, well, cycling tips. With that in mind, we have decided to start occasionally featuring a handy cycling tip – from either our staff or our VeloClub members – right here in the Daily News Digest.
We’ll kick it off with one from our Global Tech Editor James Huang:
Always wrap your spare tube in something like a Ziploc baggie, an old sock, or even plastic wrap before tucking it into your saddle pack. Otherwise, there’s a good chance the other stuff in there will wear a hole in it over time, rendering it useless when you’ve got a puncture on the side of the road.
In case you missed it
| What we didn’t publish during lockdown
Iain Treloar offers a glimpse into some of the stories that we almost but didn’t publish during the past few months.
| Silca launches hot melt wax in a bag
As Dave Rome writes, Silca has launched its own hot melt wax.
| An Indigenous person’s perspective on the Dirty Kanza
Over at The Radavist, Alexandra Houchin provides an indigenous person’s perspective on the subject of the Dirty Kanza’s name.
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