The future of the MTN Qhubeka cycling team is secure, Dougal Ryder, the MTN Qhubeka Team Principal has said.
The South African based team had a great Tour De France with a stage win for The Wirral's Steve Cummings and having Daniel Teklehaimanot in the King Of The Mountains jersey for a couple of stages but one of their lead sponsors in MTN has announced that it is not continuing its sponsorship beyond the end of this season.
“It didn’t really come as a huge surprise, although the announcement itself was a surprise to us,” Ryder said to Cycling Tips.
“We were obviously hoping MTN would continue in a smaller way.
“We knew of the business pressures that that they are under. We already knew that since October of last year. They have been through quite a lot of challenges and strikes.”
“I was a bit surprised in terms of them putting that statement out.
“One of the reasons I came back from the Tour and didn’t stay on in Europe was to do a debrief of the massive successes, not only about the bike but also around the world in terms of the media interest. Then, to have a face-to-face discussion with them on it.
“However they seemed to feel otherwise that it was time for them to make their feelings felt, I guess. To put it out there without having a discussion with us. To me it was a little surprising that it went that way.
“I arrived today with a whole lot of messages on ‘now what?’ as opposed to ‘congrats, well done, what an achievement, what an incredible team.’ So that was a little bit frustrating.
“It it is what it is, and they know what they are doing, I guess. But like I said, the team is in a good place.”
“Our future is secure. “We will announce a title partner in the next couple of weeks. I can’t mention it now. We are talking to quite a few partners that are already involved in our team currently, in terms of stepping up, and then there are one or two others that are also very interested.
“We will be registering with the UCI again in the coming weeks and we do have a title partner that is talking to some of its suppliers as well. We have guarantees of going forward. The team’s future is secure, and that is a good thing.”