January 22, 2004 – Riis Cycling, the management company of Team CSC, and Cervelo Cycles announced today at Team CSC's training camp in Tuscany, Italy that they have extended their partnership through to the end of 2006.
After an extremely successful 2003 season culminating in three Tour de France stage wins and the overall victory in the team classification, the announcement should not come as a surprise. While numerous other bike companies courted Team CSC and several other teams approached Cervelo, it was clear to all involved that the Team CSC-Cervelo partnership is an ideal match.
“Team CSC and Cervelo have proven to be a winning combination,” said Phil White, Cervelo co-founder. “They're well organized and have great riders who get results. Bjarne Riis' vision is the main reason we started our partnership with the team, and we have not been disappointed.
They have also made us better bike designers. Their feedback was instrumental in the development of our new carbon frame. We listened to their comments, showed them our designs and several of the riders rode prototypes in the development phase. When three team members rode the final version to stage victories in the Tour, we knew we had succeeded. After the Tour the riders unanimously told us that they loved the new bike and not to make any changes to it. Of course, we will always continue to improve our bikes, but those statements clearly showed the collaboration is working.”
“Our existing models such as the Soloist have benefited as well,” added Gerard Vroomen, Cervelo's other co-founder. “While the riders liked the 2003 model, they had some suggestions on how to make its handling even better. Again we listened and here at the training camp, it is gratifying to hear riders now describe the Soloist as very similar in ride to the carbon frame.”
“We are very happy to extend the partnership with Cervelo,” said Bjarne Riis. “They have proven to be very competent both as bike manufacturers and as partners of Team CSC. They have supplied us with the perfect materials and they have made sure our team has taken full advantage of even the smallest details and technical possibilities. We set extremely high standards for our equipment and Cervelo have proven them selves highly professional. We look forward to being an important part in the future developments of Cervelo bikes.”
The Team CSC-Cervelo partnership has also had a profound impact on Cervelo's business. In the past two years the “desirability” of Cervelo road bikes, as measured by North American's leading cycling magazine VeloNews, has increased ten-fold and CSC-Cervelo's Team bike was second in popularity only to the USPS bike in cyclingnews.com's reader's poll, and that bike has been in the spotlight five years longer than the Cervelo. Cervelo's now actively pursuing distributors in several European countries to take advantage of its increasing popularity there.
The following year Jalabert again won the Best Climber's red and white polka-dot jersey. Prior to this, the team's new gamble, Tyler Hamilton, had fought for the overall victory in the Giro d'Italia. With guidance from Bjarne Riis, the American was retrained, and went from being Lance Armstrong's key assistant rider to becoming one of the strongest stage riders in the sport. With a stage victory and an overall second place finish in the Giro, the scene was set for Tour de France 2003. Together with the team's other Tour trump card, Carlos Sastre, and the newly acquired Peter Luttenberger, Hamilton's Team CSC contributed with a solid victory in the team competition in the centenary Tour de France in which the team brought home three sensational stage victories, making them one of the TDF's lead teams. Tyler Hamilton's broken collarbone created a crisis, but the team rose to deliver a successful tour of historic proportions.
The team has also attained great success in the prestigious classics. Jalabert won Clasica San Sebastian in both 2001 and 2002, after which he ended his phenomenal career with Team CSC. Jakob Piil won his first World Cup race in the 2002 Paris-Tours. In the spring of 2003 Tyler Hamilton won the Liege-Bastogne-Liege, in addition to putting in a stupendous team performance. This provided the take-off for an exceptionally successful 2003 season in which the team brought home a total of twenty-three victories.