T-Mobile sports directors plan ahead

The T-Mobile training camp in Lanzarote featured not only 15 riders and support personnel, but also all of the team's sporting management. The team's new management features three newcomers, as well as a new general manager and a sport manager.

General Manager Bob Stapleton said that he was happy to delegate the work: "The assignments have been clearly distributed. I am not a technical or sporting director," he told www.t-mobile-team.com. Former T-Mobile rider Rolf Aldag is the team's new Sport Manager and has the duty of supervising the five Directeurs Sportif. However, the responsibility doesn't lay on him alone. "The team is the core. We want a team with character, to form a community in which every rider is there for the others and is willing to take over responsibility," Aldag said.

Two of the DS's are returning to the team. Valerio Piva, 48, of Italy, has been with the boys in magenta since 2005, while Dane Brian Holm, 44, joined the team a year earlier. Three newcomers will help them cover the full racing schedule over the year: Tristan Hoffman rode until 2005 and served as a DS at Team CSC before joining T-Mobile for 2007, Alan Peiper worked for Davitamon, and Jan Schaffrath is new to the team only in his current role.

All of the newcomers sat down together on Lanzarote and made plans for the coming season. "We got together with the management and the sports director. We put the racing program together and then assigned who would be DS for which race," Schaffrath said. "Everybody got what they wanted. It is a great experience to sit down together so early and to be able to have such constructive conversations."