'We learned that we can’t fall asleep' 💤 🇧🇭
Exclusive interview with Bahrain Victorious’ Milan Eržen on a transitional year and building around Martinez, Tiberi and Buitrago
2024 was a season of transition for Bahrain-Victorious, according to general manager Milan Eržen.
The team picked up just 13 victories, six down on the season before and less than half of their tally from 2021. However, rather than dwell on the past, the squad is looking to the future, having picked up French talent Lenny Martinez on a three-year deal as they look to build a squad around the former Groupama rider and their two other climbing kingpins, Antonio Tiberi and Santiago Buitrago.
Next season, Martinez and Buitrago will share leadership at the Tour de France, while Tiberi heads to his home Grand Tour in Italy to fight for the podium. Matej Mohorič will once more lead the line in the Spring Classics, but the overall make-up of the team will be to compete for victories on as many fronts as possible, while also continuing to transition to a new generation of stage racing talent.
Rod Ellingworth, who previously ran the team, has been brought back on a full-time basis and will oversee what Eržen has called ‘special projects’ while Damiano Caruso is being eyed up for a DS role once he hangs up his wheels.
At the team’s December training camp in Altea, Spain, we meet with Eržen for a rare face-to-face interview with the Slovenian. He reserved a table for us in the team’s private restaurant long before the riders began to shuffle in from their long day of training.
“It was a transitional period from the older riders to the young guys,” he says as we begin by looking back at 2024.
“We put a lot of freedom to the younger riders, but we also had a lot of bad luck with the crashes and the illnesses, especially with four riders getting COVID at the Tour de France and two of them going home after the first week. That was difficult, but cycling is up and down, and even the best teams have three years of good and then one worse year. We’ve learned that we can’t fall asleep. That’s the most important message from 2024,” he says emphatically.