Orbea reflect on winless season

Despite coming off a season bereft of triumphs, facing down-sizing next year and losing its most prized asset to a rival team, Orbea Continental head Aritz Arberas finds plenty of positives in the season that recently came to a close over in France at the Tour du Gevaudan. The team's Tour of Portugal performance, the now-departed Omar Fraile's overall season, Haritz Orbe's Tour de l'Avenir participation and the promise shown in glimpses by speedy all-rounder Carlos Barbero stand out as the most obvious high points of 2012. Former rider Arberas seems to agree.

"Carlos Barbero took part in the European Championships, Omar Fraile finished 16th in the Volta a Portugal and rode the World Championships time trial. What's more, Illart Zuazubiskar was Euskadi sub-23 track champion and medalled at the national champs", he said at www.fundacioneuskadi.com.

"We wanted to get a win in this second part of the season, but we weren't able to. However, we've shown that, despite being young, we've been able to be in the fight for the win ten times and been disputing races 'till the very last moment seven times. That's noteworthy. What's more, physically they're better (after the second part of the year). They're more ambitious, we've fought, we've been close to the win and, therefore, we have to be more than pleased with the season as a whole. For example, in Portugal we were among the ten best on mountain stages, and Carlos Barbero was second and fifth on stages in the Gran Premio Torred Vedras."

Looking to the future, Arberas highlighted the need for "better positioning, work more as a team, do better as a unit and intensify the work of formation, one of the founding objectives of the team".

As mentioned briefly above and at length in other posts over the last week, 22-year-old prodigy Omar Fraile has left the team for pastures greener, literally, over at Caja Rural. Xabier Zabalo, Aritz Etxebarria and Andoni Blázquez will all leave the team, reportedly because of their age. The latter has decided to end his career, while there's been little info on the other two.

Jon Aberasturi will, as you'll know by now, 'graduate' to Euskaltel, while Naturgas Energía's Jon Larrinaga and Debabarrena's Mikel Aristi will join the blue squad. As the team is still holding out hope of attracting more sponsors, no limit is set on the number of riders for next year as of yet.

Arberas goes on to briefly comment on each rider's respective performances throughout the year, but as they're written in Basque they don't make much sense to me - and Google Translate certainly doesn't offer much help. If you feel like taking a crack at it, click this link.

Photo: El Pedal de Frodo