Bizkaia and Sopela, the trees that kept the garden alive

April 25 ^th 2024 - 16:00 [GMT + 2]

• For more than two decades, Bizkaia-Durango and Sopela Women’s Team were the cornerstone of the Spanish cycling peloton. Both teams shut down this winter, yet their legacy will last long.
• Mavi García, Sheyla Gutiérrez, Ane Santesteban, Lourdes Oyarbide, Sara Martín, Sandra Alonso… 14 out of the 30 current Spanish UCI riders developed their talents in one of these two squads.

Let’s picture cycling as if it was a garden. The quantity and quality of its trees will dictate the delight of the fruits that it may grow to nourish the imagination of the public. For a while, at the start of the current century, the Spanish peloton was thriving with cycling teams burgeoning in every corner of the country. Unfortunately, the economical crisis that swept the country between 2008 and 2012 caused a drought in sponsorship that withered most plants in the garden. Only two trees stood vigorously, both in Vizcaya. Spanish cycling is still living off their crop.

For most of the last decade, Bizkaia-Durango and Lointek / Sopela Women’s Team were the benchmark in Spain’s female peloton. Back in those years, an event like La Vuelta Femenina by Carrefour.es, that both of them could enter in 2023, was the stuff of dreams. Their duels were the narrative of the season, with occasional guests getting away with victories by taking advantage of their antagonism, as did Olympic champion Anna Kiesenhofer in the Copa de España 2016. Their fight kept the scene alive, while at the same time granted Spanish cyclists an opportunity to develop their prospects in both national and international races.

Bizkaia-Durango originally joined the UCI ranks in 2003, when the Sociedad Ciclista Duranguesa set up the team around Joane Somarriba. When the Basque cycling legend retired from professional cycling, the team went on to become a lifeline for young talents who would later reach the top tier of the sport like Ane Santesteban or Anna Sanchis did. Other women who raced for their team have become prominent figures off the bike, like Spanish national team coach Gema Pascual or renowned trainer Iosune Murillo.

Sopela Women’s Team was an operation ran by Sociedad Ciclista Ugeraga, a cycling club from Sopelana that had been involved in women’s cycling for a decade before creating the UCI team with the support of engineering firm Lointek, who took over the main sponsorship of the entity from local facility Hotel Modus Vivendi. This outfit launched and supported talents like Eneritz Iturriaga or Sheyla Gutiérrez.

“Bizkaia and Sopela kept Spanish cycling afloat when no one else was there. Without these two teams, many riders would have been hopeless.” Movistar Team’s sports director Jorge Sanz got to know women’s cycling via the Lointek team. “I first began working with them in 2013. I didn’t know anything about the scene, and I’m thankful they showed me a different, exciting cycling on which everybody did their 150% - from the president of the cycling club to each and every rider. My professional career would have been completely different without them.”

When Movistar Team created its professional women’s team, 38 years after setting up the men’s, its roster was put together with the best riders from both Bizkaia and Lointek. Mavi García, Lourdes Oyarbide and Lorena Llamas joined from Durango, while Eider Merino, Alicia González, Alba Teruel and Gloria Rodríguez came from Sopelana. It was them, along with many others, who laid the foundations for Spain’s one and only UCI Women’s WorldTour team – the one who dominated women’s cycling for a few seasons, led by Annemiek van Vleuten.

Foreign teams have also appreciated the devoted work of Bizkaia and Sopela. Look no further than Sandra Alonso, who transferred to Ceratizit-WNT after thriving in Durango. 14 out of the 30 current Spanish UCI riders raced for at least one of these two squads, but also many foreign riders benefited from these sporting projects. France’s Aude Biannic and Great Britain’s Claire Steels, par example, ride nowadays for the Movistar Team after a spell in Sopelana. Chile’s Catalina Soto and Mauritius’ Kimberly Le Court both became professional riders after getting some European racing experience in Bizkaia-Durango.

A change of the regulations for UCI Women’s Continental Teams in Spain was enforced last winter, raising the budgetary bar significantly. Only two squads, Fundación Euskadi’s Laboral Kutxa and Eneritz Iturriaga’s Eneicat-CM Team, could meet the demands to renew their Spanish license. Fundación Marcelino Oliver’s Soltec Team was forced to register in Panamá. Other invaluable projects like Club Ciclista Meruelo’s Cantabria Deporte, Catalunya’s Massi-Tactic or Galicia’s Farto-BTC had to step down and become amateur teams. Meanwhile, those two trees that kept the garden alive, Bizkaia-Durango and Lointek / Sopela Women’s Team, wilted and shut down their operations. The legacy of their decades-long work will last for years, and La Vuelta Femenina 24 by Carrefour.es will be a good example of this.