CCC TEAM

CCC, a footwear giant and long-time sponsor of Polish cycling, took over from BMC, in turn the spiritual heir to the Phonak team managed by American Jim Ochowicz, whose paternal grandfather emigrated to the United States from Poland. Even though its riders swapped their famous black and red colours for orange in 2019, it remains the same outfit that delivered the first Tour de France winner from the Southern Hemisphere and the world of MTB: Cadel Evans, the then-current world champion who had been sacked from Silence–Lotto at the end of the 2009 season. 

The Australian stood on the top step of the podium in Paris in 2011. Second in the Les Essarts team time trial (a format in which the team thrived from the very beginning), Evans went on to triumph on the "Breton Alpe d'Huez" (Mûr-de-Bretagne) before moving within striking distance of yellow on the real Alpe d'Huez, the last climb of the 98th Tour de France. He then leapfrogged Andy Schleck in the Grenoble time trial.

The team's financial backer, Swiss billionaire Andy Rihs, was on cloud nine. After all the woes of the Landis affair in 2006, the wine and cycling aficionado had sworn never to head a team again, but in reality he stood behind his riders until he passed away in April 2018. Evans passed on the torch to Tejay van Garderen, fifth overall and best young rider in the 2012 Tour and again fifth in 2014, and then Richie Porte, a former lieutenant of Chris Froome who also finished fifth in 2016. Porte, however, crashed out of the race on the descent of Relais du Chat in 2017 and in a stage in northern France in 2018, before the peloton had even reached the cobblestones. Greg Van Avermaet, who wore the yellow jersey in 2016 and 2018 and pulled on the polka-dot jersey in front of his home crowd in 2019 after taking maximum points at the top of the Mur de Grammont, has stayed on as the leader of CCC. The team has also recruited Tour and Giro stage winners such as Ilnur Zakarin, Matteo Trentin and Fausto Masnada to take its performance to the next level in 2020.