No team in its first year of existence has been granted a wild-card by the organizers of La Vuelta since the Cervélo TestTeam that featured the reigning Tour de France champion Carlos Sastre in 2009. It means a lot for Aqua Blue Sport founder Rick Delaney, a Monaco-based Irish businessman who opened an online cycling store, dubbed the ‘Amazon for bicycle equipments”. The website is set to deliver revenue that will make the team sustainable by year three of the project.
As much as Manzana-Postobon brings back the memories of the Colombian pioneers with Lucho Herrera winning La Vuelta in 1987, the Spanish Grand Tour has a special place in the history of Irish cycling since Sean Kelly won it in 1988. In total, Irish riders have claimed 22 stages of La Vuelta, the last one being by Nicolas Roche on stage 18 in Riaza in 2015.
“We were in Belgium for the Three Days of De Panne when we got the news of our invitation to La Vuelta at the end of March”, Aqua Blue Sport sport director Tim Barry recalled. “It was a special moment for everybody in our organization because we’re such a young and a new team. It’s amazing. At the start of the year, it was the top of a dream list to do one of the Grand Tours as in year 1. We can’t wait for it to happen. We want to do a good job and represent the team well and do a tribute to the race.”
Following the enthusiastic debut of the squad in the Middle East at the Dubai Tour and the Tour of Oman, the call for La Vuelta was the turning point for Aqua Blue Sport. “From that point on, we changed our plans for the second half of the season”, Barry said. “We’ve done our best to try and prepare well and focus on La Vuelta with the riders that we have, to come there with knowing that we can do a good race.”
Their first WorldTour stage victory with Larry Warbasse at the Tour de Suisse marked the rise of the Irish team to the highest level of professional cycling. They also won the King of the Mountains competition with Denmark’s Lasse Hansen at Switzerland’s premier stage race in June. Warbasse went on to claim the American national title. Therefore, the stars and stripes are expected to shine at La Vuelta meanwhile a strong participation from the US is announced with the likes of Andrew Talansky, Joe Dombrowski and Tejay van Garderen.
Winning the Tour of Austria with Stefan Denifl in July has definitely installed Aqua Blue Sport as a team that WorldTour outfits cannot underestimate. They kept the momentum until Michel Kreder came third overall at the Arctic Race of Norway last week.
“We’ve got some good sprint results lately as well”, Barry added. “Adam Blythe was second in a stage of the Tour of Burgos recently, second in a stage of Wallonie and very close to the win. It’s very possible that he could win a stage of La Vuelta in a sprint finish. We’ve got a lot of attacking riders. We’ve got some good climbers with Larry and Stefan. We’ll look at the full race with them while the other guys will focus on stage results and support each other.”
“Our spirit will be to race aggressively and leave a mark in the race, to work well as a unit and really make an impact”, the Irish coach continued. “With the nature of our team and the way the team is organized with Aqua Blue Sport being an e-commerce site that interacts with the public, it’s important for us to be visible and to get a lot of exposure, so people can go to the website, shop and support the team. We need to put on a good show, which we have done so far. We also need to get results.”
The team’s trademark is the gold chevron on the riders’ jerseys. They’ve been riding in a blue and gold kit since the beginning of the year but a special edition white kit has been issued for La Vuelta. “We’re incredibly honored to be taking part in this race and to mark the occasion we have decided to make a one off white jersey”, general manager Stephen Moore declared. “It’ll add benefit for the riders to deal with the high heat of Spain in August.”
