First Endurance sponsored rider André Greipel (HTC-Columbia) netted his fifth win of the season with a victory in the final stage of the Tour of Mallorca, Spain. Greipel was the fastest in the 158.5-kilometre stage from Magalluf to Palmanova, ahead of Spaniard Koldo Fernandez de Larrea and Portuguese rider Manuel Cardoso.

“I wasn’t expecting this win. Before the stage I thought I’d just try to hang on for as long as I could in the hillier parts, but I got over the climbs in a lot better shape than I’d thought possible,” Greipel said afterwards. “In the last 40 kilometres my HTC-Columbia teammates did a lot of chasing of the riders who’d broken away and that way we had everything under control in the last part of the stage. There were three roundabouts in the last five kilometres where things got a bit more complicated again.  But I followed my teammate [Vicente] Reynes. I was about fifth wheel on the final right-hand corner onto the finishing straight on the seafront and then I went for it in the last 200 metres. It’s always good to get a win, but I’m particularly pleased with how well I got over the climbs on a tough day, too. My teammates worked hard for this, too, and we deserved to get a win.”

Greipel now heads to the Tour of the Algarve in Portugal, after which he will race in Paris-Nice in France.

About First Endurance:

First Endurance was started by two racing fanatics (a cyclist and a triathlete) with a healthy obsession for sports nutrition. The idea was simple. Give endurance athletes access to formulas that are developed for one specific reason-to maximize endurance performance. First Endurance is committed to using only the highest-quality ingredients and uses the latest scientifically validated technological advancements. First Endurance proudly sponsors the BMC, HTC-Columbia and Bissell professional cycling teams.   These cyclists work closely with First Endurance on new product development. Input and trials from the First Endurance athletes are used to develop new products like the new and improved EFS drinks that were introduced on Feb 1, 2010.

Team Columbia-HTC (sponsored by First Endurance) continues to be honored for a winning 2009 season by earning 12 out of 16 votes for “Best Team of 2009″ by an international panel of industry insiders selected by Cyclingnews.com. In a three-part summary of the year’s highlights, Columbia-HTC was ranked number one by nearly all of the participating panelists.

“Columbia-HTC [is] such a strong team on so many fronts,” commented Rupert Guinness of the Sydney Morning Herald. “They seemed to feed off every win, and their enthusiasm never waned. Watching them genuinely savour their victories and thank their teammates was terrific to watch. Peter Cossins, contributing editor to Procycling Magazine noted, “Whether it was their men or women, they hoovered up the victories like no team has since Mapei in their pomp.”

Highlighting the team’s 132 season victories, Cyclingnews US Editor Laura Weislo pointed to Team Columbia-HTC’s men and women. “Who can argue that a team that wins so many races doesn’t deserve this title?”

Columbia-HTC also received three out of four contributing editors’ votes for Best 2009 Team by Cycle Sport Magazine.

San Luis Obispo, CA, 7th December 2009 – Talk to any professional racer and you’ll quickly find out why Italian National Time Trial Champion Noemi Cantele is rated so highly in the peloton – and why she’s one of the new additions to Columbia-HTC  for 2010. Eight years a pro, Cantele believes that a large percentage of the bunch will have been witness to at least one of her trademark early-race moves. “I’m a very restless sort of person, so I guess by now almost everybody’s seen me charge off the front in the first couple of hours,” Cantele explains with a laugh. “In fact, in the bunch my nickname is ‘Little Crazy Horse’ because I always want to get away so early.” The new Columbia-HTC rider says that as a teenager she was sure that competitive cycling would be part of her future. Her family put the idea into her head from an early age. “I got my first racing bike at two, when I was so small I could barely reach the pedals,” the 28-year-old from Varese in northwest Italy recalls. “Then when I was nine, what inspired me even more to take up racing was seeing [Italian champion] Gianni Bugno winning the uphill time trial [and the overall classification] in the Tour of Italy.”

From that moment on, Cantele was hooked. She turned pro in 2002. Currently sixth in the UCI World rankings, Cantele’s two biggest wins to date are twin victories in GP Ouest Plouay World Cup round in 2005 and 2007. This year overall it went even better. She won a stage of the Tour of Italy, the national time trial champion’s title and then took two medals in the World Championships: bronze in the road race and silver in the time trial. “The results that surprised me the most this year were the time trials. I never used to like them. They ask for a lot of self-control for an aggressive rider like me,” she recalls. “In the last year or so I’ve changed my training and things have got a lot better in the time trials. But if anybody had told me I’d get the silver medal in the World Championships, I’d never have believed them!”

Her next big step will be riding with Columbia-HTC in 2010, a choice she says which was logical because “they have the right values for our sport in all sorts of ways. They win races, they have a lot of fun and they’re very united as a squad. They have an attitude toward racing that I really like and admire.”

San Luis Obispo, CA, 10th November 2009 – Team Columbia-HTC has received Eurosport’s Number One Team ranking in the 2009 Classment Eurosport, and Mark Cavendish tops the ranking as the number one cyclist in 2009. With three riders in the top ten and 86 wins during 2009, Team Columbia-HTC capped the team ranking with an impressive 7,253 points, ahead of Teams Astana and Saxo Bank by greater than a 40 percent gap.

The ranking is based on more than 160 races on the UCI calendar. Points are awarded to riders in the top ten of each race, the top 20 in the major Tours, stage winners and jersey wearers. According to the point totals published on www.fr.sports.yahoo.com/cyclisme, Cavendish, as the most successful rider of the season, scored a total of 3,193 points for his 23 victories riding for Columbia-HTC.
Team Columbia-HTC riders earned three of the top-ten individual spots, and Cavendish also topped the best young rider ranking.

“What sets our team apart,” commented Columbia-HTC Directeur Sportif Rolf Aldag, “is we won races from January to October, including 17 Grand Tour stage wins, Milan-San Remo, Ghent-Wevelgem, six stage wins in the Tour of Switzerland, and seven national time trial championships titles. Together we can be proud of our results in 2009.”

For the second year running, the First Endurance sponsored Columbia-HTC men’s squad has completed the road-racing season with more wins than any ProTour team. Starting with Mick Rogers’ [AUS] victory in the Australian National Time Trial Championships on January 8th and ending with Marco Pinotti’s [ITA] first place in the Citta di Stressa time trial in Italy on October 18th, Columbia-HTC racked up 86 victories by 15 different riders in the 2009 season, one more victory than in 2008.

The 2009 victories saw Columbia-HTC riders take 17 Grand Tour stage wins, as well as the Milan-San Remo ‘Monument’. Other highpoints of the season included Ghent-Wevelgem, Paris-Bourges and Eroica Classics, six stage wins in the Tour of Switzerland, seven national time trial championships titles, the US National road-race, and the final Green jersey – Columbia-HTC’s first in a “Grand Tour – in the Vuelta a Espana. Columbia-HTC riders also secured overall victory in the Eneco Tour and multiple stage wins in the Tours of Britain, Missouri, Poland, Austria, Qatar, California, the Basque Country and Murcia in Spain, the Ster Elektrotoer in Holland, the Bayern Rundfahrt in Germany, the Tour of Romandie in Switzerland and the Three Days of De Panne in Belgium.

“2009 proved to be an outstanding year for Columbia-HTC,” commented team owner Bob Stapleton. “We had ambitious goals with this international team of young riders, and we exceeded even our own expectations. Seventeen Grand Tour victories, wearing the green and white jerseys at the Tour de France and the Giro’s maglia rosa, the gold leader’s jersey at the Vuelta. These are fantastic accomplishments, but its the exemplary teamwork demonstrated by our athletes and staff that we are most proud of”

“What makes me so pleased about this degree of success is that everybody got their chance and everybody took their chance,” commented Columbia-HTC manager Rolf Aldag. “We did very well in 2008, but in 2009 what I’d highlight is the quality of the wins. Seventeen wins in major Tours, for example, is an amazing total. I can’t say which victory was the most memorable, although watching the entire team pull away on stage three of the Tour and then Mark Cavendish sprinting across the line in first place was pretty impressive. In terms of the quality of wins, I’d just say it’s almost impossible to get better on that level. In 2010 we’ll be looking to see if our younger riders can confirm the faith we have in them. Guys like Tony Martin and all of new, young riders from the amateur ranks we’re bringing in.”

Aldag added, “Now it is time to look toward 2010 and beyond. An important part of our success story in 2009 was what we did in 2008, and the same goes for next season. The training camps are planned, and It’s all falling into place. In a year’s time we hope we’ll be reaping the rewards of that hard work again, just like we did in 2008 and 2009.”