Grand Tour Specialist
Posts: 5235
Joined: 29-09-2018
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[Thomas]
Good evening everybody, thanks for joining us today.
Us, that means Emanuel Probst, CEO of Jura Haushaltsgeräte. Christian Ammann, CEO of GIANTS Software. Rubens Bertogliati, Directeur Sportif of Jura GIANTS. And myself, Thomas Peter, CEO of Swiss Cycling.
Emanuel, Christian, your companies are the main sponsors of MGUCI PT outfit Jura GIANTS. Rubens, you're the team's DS. It's probably safe to say that the season hasn't been going according to plan to date. Rubens, tell us what went wrong.
[Rubens]
Well, it's not just one thing, it's a complex combination of unlucky events. First, the pre-season wasn't great. We saw some important changes in the MGUCI world, and most of them were not in our team's favour. Riders who we expected to be solid points scorers - or even to join the extended world class level - suddenly lost a lot of their worth.
Worse, even riders we signed to enhance our team's quality turned out to be far weaker than we thought - not the least "thanks" to the aforementioned changes. A lot of things went in the wrong way for us during the offseason.
Take the first results, which were mostly between mediocre and plain awful - and that's what made team manager Mr. Fabianski throw in the towel.
[Thomas]
That sounds bad indeed, and it really was bad. In my role as the Managing Director of the Swiss Cycling Association, I was in touch with most of the Swiss riders - and morale was really low.
Which was in particular true for Mauro Schmid and Valentin Darbellay, who had great hopes of making a big step forward this year - the opposite was true, at least at the beginning of 2025. Or take Fabio Christen, who was dreaming of becoming the next Kemboi - but with the new regulations he would be far from being competitive if the team developed him that way.
So a lot of frustration on the rider side as well, not only for the manager. It was a big blow for the sponsors as well, who were mostly delighted during the last three seasons. Or am I wrong, Emanuel?
[Emanuel]
That's exactly right. I mean, we kind of know the experience of changed mechanics. You try to develop a brand new coffee machine, and the first results are rarely what you'd hope them to be. But as you start understanding the issues, you adapt and eventually you get there.
But this situation is different. Here we had a system working really well - and all of a sudden it's broken. In the world of coffee machines, it would take a change of physics laws to get a similar effect. That will never happen. But with our cycling team, we saw exactly that.
We knew it might be a rough season, but so many things not working anymore - even things that should on paper have improved - is truly frustrating.
[Christian]
I can only second this, even though I'm working in a completely different domain.
You know, sports somehow is a game. And in a game, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. But nothing is as annoying as losing due to breaking changes in a game, especially changes you couldn't really see coming to a certain extent.
So yes, it definitely was a frustrating start to the year - even more so given that even last year's superstar, Kaden Groves, was nowhere close to being as competitive as he was in 2024. With results being even worse than expected - and we didn't expect a top-notch season, fully supporting the team's development strategy - it's obvious that we cannot be satisfied.
[Rubens]
Yes, there were a couple of awful results, with riders sometimes just not caring about the race, not even trying to get at least some kind of a satisfying results. Take Tasmania, Qatar, Tirreno, Ukraine, MSR or Balkans as bad examples. Or even more recently, Scandinavia being a total failure, in particular after last year's relative success. That's a whole lot of really bad races.
Add on top of that the expected low results on the cobbles, due to the lack of a specialist - and there's not much left to be satisfied with.
[Thomas]
And yet, there's a reason why we're here tonight. Because we do have a message for you. But before we get to that, let's take a look at some of the few great moments of the 2025 season so far. Rubens, what were the glimpses of hope so far?
[Rubens]
Let's start with one that might not appear to be outstanding, yet still was a good sign:
This is  Mauro Schmid, finishing 7th in Grand-Duché. That's worse than last year where he ended up 5th, but much better than the worst-case scenario we were genuinely afraid of - missing out on the Top 30. It shows that the team's investement into his physical condition was the right decision - even though it hurts a lot not to see him get to the next puncheur level, as we were all expecting.
Next up is this one:
TTTs have been one of our main focus points in recent years, and our outfit still worked very well in the Copenhagen - Malmö classic. 5th place this year, our best result to date!
And then, probably the biggest highlight in 2025 to date - you probably guess which race I'm talking about:
For the 3rd year in a row, the Giro d'Italia has been very kind to us. After two wins in 2023 (by Bol) and one last year (by Szarka), it was Valentin Darbellay's turn in 2025, winning stage 14!
Valentin joined a lot of breakaways - something we were missing from him last year - and converted one of those into a stage win.
But that wasn't all - he even got to wear the Maglia Rosa for a total of five days! One day after stage 9, and then for a full four days after stage 15. Surely a career highlight - for a rider who looked to be a complete failure this year according to the previous results!
Val dropped a little in stages 19 and 20, but still managed to hold onto 8th place in GC - the team's 3rd straight GC Top 10 in the Giro!
Lastly, we can mention the Tour of Northern Europe - a race we were already hoping to do well in last year, but this year we actually got the result we were hoping for:
This is Mauro Schmid, riding the stage 4 ITT in yellow! He did a great job on the cobbled stage 3, finishing 4th, to take over the leader jersey. Of course, he lost it in the ITT, but with two hilly stages to go, he stayed in GC contention.
Unfortunately, he made a crucial tactical error on stage 7, being caught out of position - but he still was able to secure a fantastic 3rd place in the final GC! Our best GC result of the season to date, and definitely a big relief for the entire team, but definitely for himself first and foremost!
It even looked like we might write another success story in our home race, the Tour de Suisse, but unfortunately Valentin Darbellay had a horrible TT in what was otherwise a great race for him, so instead of a possible GC podium he "only" took 7th place. Respectable, but much more would have been on the cards.
[Thomas]
There were definitely much more lows than highs this year, but these strong results show that the team is still alive. Sure, Mauro Schmid is the big loser of the year - symptomatic for that is San Sebastian, where he only finished 10th after having been 2nd and 1st in recent editions. And Darbellay isn't as consistent as the team was hoping him to be. And Groves' 2025 edition is miserable compared to the two last years.
But still, Swiss Cycling believes that there is a lot of potential in this team. And for us, it is a horrible scenario to see a team mostly focusing on Swiss riders just disappear - even more so a team at the highest level. And so, we wanted to find a solution.
Emanuel, please explain your point of view.
[Emanuel]
Jura has been a sponsor of this team for years now. We've been through lows, we've been through highs. We never had the intention of stopping our engagement by the end of this year - no matter how bad the results would be.
So the announcement of Mr. Fabianski of the team's disband was shocking news for us. Sure, as the team's manager it's his right to take this decision - but we were surprised and disappointed that there were no talks before that announcement.
We can somewhat understand that it was just too much for him at this point in time, but we still do not agree to make a full stop at this point. So we discussed the situation with Rubens, who was delighted to hear our point of view, and who immediately contacted Thomas and Christian.
[Christian]
Our point of view was exactly the same. This team has been a perfect platform for us in years, and it was great for us to get known globally by supporting mostly locally. The "Game Over" message came out of the blue, and we don't think that this is a proper end to the great game the team has been playing recently.
[Rubens]
I was more than happy to hear that our two main sponsors were fundamentally opposed to a disband. But I couldn't really do anything, with Mr. Fabianski being the MGUCI licence owner after all. So I tried to make use of Thomas' connections to the cycling world - as he explained before, we all agreed that it would be a huge loss for Swiss Cycling to stop this team, so we needed to examinate all our options.
[Thomas]
Our position was clear from the start: Swiss Cycling needs this team, and its focus on local riders. It could even turn into a pure development team and still be of great value - but for us it was clear that the show must go on!
So our message tonight to all the riders is that we stand with you, we want to keep writing this story, and we'll give Rubens all support he needs! We seriously hope that there will be a future for Jura GIANTS, whatever the team will look like!
We know that what has been said has been said, and that is a fact that Mr. Fabianski announced the team's disband. So we'll need MGUCI's favours to secure the team's continuation.
[Rubens]
The good news is that we have finally been able to reach out to Mr. Fabianski. He was delighted to hear that there is so much support for the project he's been putting so much effort into for years. He does not know whether the team will continue or not, and what kind of role he'd take on if MGUCI allow the team to continue.
But what we can share with you tonight is the following letter that he sent to MGUCI:
Dear MGUCI
As you know, I have announced the disband of PT team Jura GIANTS by the end of the 2025 season.
I made this announcement after a lot of disappointing results, some of which directly caused by your change of regulations at the start of the ongoing season.
However, it has become evident to me that such a step would cause big damage to the development of cycling, particularly in Switzerland. Which is an outcome that I do not intend at all.
Therefore, I hereby withdraw the disband request for team Jura GIANTS.
I do not even know whether this is possible, but if your regulations allow it, I would like to inform you that the team and its principal sponsors are willing to continue beyond the 2025 season.
Kind regards,
Fabianski
So, that's today's main news. We don't know yet how MGUCI's ruling on this will be, but we hope that they'll give us another chance.
Thank you for attending, and good night.
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