New look, new ambitions for Katusha in 2016
Katusha hopes to ride its flashy new team kit to fresh horizons in 2016
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Russian super-team Katusha unveiled a new look Saturday night, along with new ambitions for the 2016 season.
Katusha has a new jersey with a heavy accent on red for the coming racing season, and along with it, the team will be packing hopes of opening new horizons. No longer wanting to be the peloton’s “Russian team,” Katusha is expanding its base, with a renewed focus on cycling’s most important races.
“With the team we have now, we expect to be competitive in just about every race we go to,” said Katusha sport director José Azevedo on Saturday in a telephone interview before attending the team’s presentation ceremony on Spain’s Mediterranean coast. “[Joaquim] Rodríguez and [Alexander] Kristoff remain our bases, but we’ve brought on new riders that make us even more stronger.”
More than 200 team sponsors, VIPs, media, and friends joined the celebration, with team backer Igor Makarov the center of attention. Makarov has been the gravitational force for the team since its inaugural season in 2009, but looking forward, the team is expanding its horizons beyond Russia.
“We are still a team with many Russian riders, and we will always have a strong Russian base,” Azevedo continued. “But we want to be competitive internationally, and that means we are always looking for the best riders.”
Katusha’s Russian base remains firmly intact for 2016, with 14 of the team’s 28 riders hailing from the motherland. The Katusha experiment, however, has failed to deliver a major Russian GC star to seriously challenge for the grand tours. The team still hopes its collective bets on young talent will pay off, but it’s also realistic enough to know that if it wants to be competitive at the WorldTour level, it needs to search out talent regardless of the rider’s passport.
Katusha is still counting on its two majors stars — Joaquim Rodríguez and Alexander Kristoff — to carry the team colors. Both enjoyed exceptional 2015 campaigns, and Katusha is hoping for more of the same next year.
“Alexander is our man for the classics and sprints. He won 20 races last year, and that says it all,” Azevedo said. “Purito is ambitious as ever. He’s 36, but I don’t look at his birthday. He was back at his best in 2015, with two stage wins at the Tour [de France] and second overall at the Vuelta [a España]. He is always at the top.”
Kristoff and Rodríguez will both race similar programs to last year. Kristoff, 28, will have a heavy emphasis on the spring classics before rebuilding for the Tour de France. With the Olympics course too mountainous for Kristoff, the Norwegian will reload for a run at the world title in Qatar on a course that’s ideal for his turbo-charged style.
Rodríguez, 36, will also hit the repeat button for 2016, replacing the worlds with the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
“We expect both Purito and Alex to be at their best this season,” Azevedo said. “We’ve brought on riders to make the team stronger, and support them both.”
For 2016, the team brings on six new faces, and only one of them — Tour de l’Avenir stage-winner Matvei Mamykin — is Russian. New neo-pros include Colombian Jhonatan Restrepo and highly touted German all-rounder Neils Politt. Katusha is betting big on three major recruits, with Rein Taaramae (Astana), Michael Morkov (Tinkoff-Saxo), and Jurgen Van den Broeck (Lotto-Soudal).
Taaramae will carry team colors in the one-week stage races and the Giro d’Italia (along with Tour de Romandie winner Ilnur Zakarin) while Van den Broeck will join Rodríguez in the Tour. Morkov will be Kristoff’s helper in the classics and sprints.
“We believe Jurgen can return to his best. He’s had two bad seasons, but we are confident in him,” Azevedo said. “Morkov will give us extra firepower in the sprints as well as the classics. He’s a very strong rider, and gives us more depth in both areas.”
Gone are seven riders, including Dani Moreno (to Movistar), Yuri Trofimov (to Tinkoff), Gatis Smukulis (to Astana), and Alexandr Kolobnev, who retired.
For 2016, Katusha hopes to take its game up a notch. This season, Katusha finished with Rodríguez ranked second, and Kristoff fourth in the WorldTour rankings. The team finished just five points behind Movistar in the WorldTour team rankings.
“Everyone is very excited about the coming season. Everyone at the training camps are very ambitious,” Azevedo said. “We had a great 2015 season, and we want to be even better next year. We were second in the WorldTour, maybe we can be first next season. That is the goal.”
