A new Welsh-based professional cycling team has been launched and their aim is to compete in the 2019 Tour de France.
Eifion Weinzweig is the man behind the team, which is named We Are Wales. Weinzweig, of Bridgend, has named one of his former coaches, Frenchman Yann Dejan, as its performance director.
The team’s home will be in Cardiff and its training base in Brittany, France, while Weinzweig says the squad will include at least four Welsh riders. Weinzweig wants the team to begin competing at third-tier professional level in 2016 and progress from there to the sport’s premier continental road races.
Weinzweig told the BBC: “We’re starting off at continental level for the first two years, [then we want to] stabilise the riders, stabilise the finances and the business model and then move up to the second division in year three.
“That’s when we can start officially trying to get into the Tour de France.”
