Taking things back to the start, was the initial thinking behind setting up a triathlon team and what did you hope to achieve?
It all started initially back in 2008 with our owners supporting an individual athlete, then a couple years later in 2010 a second athlete joined the team and they provided a bit more structure around those athletes and the feeling of small team and that's where the initials idea came from that if we want to support the athletes in the best possible way then we need a professional structure that that can do so, and in our opinion that's only possible in a team set up. As an individual athlete it's almost impossible to have a doctor, and a physio, and a masseur, and a mechanic, and travel coordinator and marketing team; it's almost impossible from a financial point of view to run that unless you are the best in the world so we felt that if we wanted to bring athletes to a higher level, we need to focus on every single aspect that can make them better.
We strongly believed in this team structure and initially it was tested at a Belgian level, so the main sponsor at the time was a company called Uplace, and we launched the biggest ever triathlon team set up created in Belgian, but with the intention to compete at the highest international level. That was in 2011 and then for three season they competed with solely Belgian athletes and then gradually it became clear that international expansion was the way forward. At the same time we started talking to BMC; at that moment in time BMC had their own road racing team, they set up a MTB team and in triathlon they were working with individuals and also for them, the conclusion was very similar to our vision that yes triathlon is an individual sport but you need to support athletes with everything they need. Everything they did with their team structures in cycling, in mountain biking was the way they wanted to move forward in triathlon. SO from the our first conversation in 2011, in 2012 we signed an intentions agreement and in 2013 we signed a contract and started the development of an Uplace - BMC Pro Triathlon team.
It's all about making sure we can optimise the performance of our athletes and our belief is that we can only do that in a team set up, providing every single aspect they need to become better athletes.
And do you think you've achieved that from an athlete's point of view and from the results of 2014?
We're a year in to our international project and it's a great time to look back at things and first there's the results, and you can really say "what have we done last year?". Well we won 21 times, 46 podiums, four continental titles including the European champion Ironman, the European title at half distance Ironman, the Asia-Pacific Ironman champion, US Pro champion, we won Challenge Bahrein, the biggest race outside the Ironman circuit so in the results we were really pleased as that gave us a belief that the support that provide the team is working. If you then look purely at feedback you get from the athletes, then lots of small things that they were previously missing, they now really see the benefit of being in a team. For example, for a mechanic at every race! It's a mechanical sport, I don't think you have any road cyclist that would ride a Tour de France stage before his bike had been checked out. So in cycling there has always been a natural thing that that happens, but for triathletes they were still packing up a bike, going to a race and setting it up and racing, so from that point of view we get phenomenal feedback; looking at all the little details and adding it up. We also have Geert who's here providing press releases straight after races to make sure we got images of every athlete, removing the marketing aspect away from the athletes and giving the biggest returns to sponsors. We feel like we're bringing together all the little things and have made our athletes lives better, especially with the clear focus on getting better as athletes so they can focus on their training, their racing and their recovery. we look back at out first season and it's been very good!
And so we're here at Sands Beach in Lanzarote, the start of 2015, is the idea to continue where last year left off, how do you improve and what are you aims for the next 12 months?
If you race well in a year, the question is always 'what's next?!'. First of all we want to do the same and that won't be easy, we had a great year! So number one goal is to consolidate and really shows that we can be the best team in the world, that we can win races and we want to be competing at the biggest races in the world. There's a clear focus on World Championship in Hawaii, at the World Championship for half distance in Austria and the Triple Crown Series, that will be the clear focus the team.
Secondly, away from the sport side of things, we have a real clear vision in terms of our sustainability, in terms of our future as a team. We started 2008 and now we're in 2015 and we really feel that the project is ready to attract sponsors from outside of triathlon; triathlon is one of the fastest growing sports in the world, it's a very authentic sport with great values and could be interesting for a brand outside of triathlon ti use the sport as a marketing tool. We feel that the Uplace - BMC Pro triathlon team is ready to expand in that respect. It's a legacy we want to extend in triathlon; i mentioned cycling already but I always use the example of Patrick Lefevere, the CEO of Etixx - Quickstep team, last year was the Omega Pharma - Quick Step, every single year he's winning Paris - Roubaix and he's been creating one of the best teams in the world and we feel that triathlon is at that stage and we really believe with that set up that we've manages to create on the athlete side of things and the structure around them, but we especially think we have a project ready to expand partnerships. We want to start building on the legacy for the years to come.
How to train for an Ironman 70.3?
It's not just an idea, we investigated that and at this moment in time if we want to do something like that, it's all about doing it in the right way. We want to be ready, but we'd need an additional budget to come in. It makes a lot of sense to have a development team, for athletes and a sponsor, wanting to create a grass routes set up for triathlon, we feel there's an opportunity there and we'd definitely have an interest in linking a pro team to a project like that.
