Luca Guercilena

“The biggest impact on the teams are usually the GC riders because they come with team-mates”

t is a different situation for each team manger but June or July is a stressful time for the negotiation for the main names. This year I’m not in that much of a hurry because last year we signed 20 riders for the next couple of years so we are just looking at the market to see if there are opportunities to improve the general level of the team.

Every year there are names on the market that everyone is looking for. Last season Sagan was the man of the market and he was moving a lot of money so that changes the set-up of the team.

This year I don’t see something that big. More or less the structures of the team are fixed; while there are some special riders like Sagan, and like Cancellara was, the biggest impact on the teams are usually the GC riders because they come with team-mates and you need to change the structure of the team.

This year I don’t see big, big movements, but there are some big people on the market such as Aru and Porte, so it is difficult to analyse.

I can say that this year we are even more calm because you need a lot money to make a team, most of the money is in riders’ salaries and its always complicated going to spend money when the money you have is not defined. But we now have long-term sponsors in place, which takes one variable out of it.

I think signing Fabio Felline in 2014 was one of the best deals I have done. We knew he was a good rider and we made a good contract but he developed better than we were expecting. As usual, when it’s then time to renew you have to pay what you’ve not been paying before. That’s the way it is if you want to be fair.

Probably the worst deal I’ve done was sign Julian Arredondo because we hired him really cheap and after the first results we were thinking he could develop to a really high level but it didn’t happen. It was like from the day after he signed the contract his level decreased. But we had a three-year contract and we respected it.

A veteran of the Mapei system where he worked mostly as a trainer for 10 years, Italian Luca Guercilena has run the Trek racing team since 2012 and hates mowing the lawn.