World Tour Ranking: 12th (up from 14th)
Win Count: 30 (up from 26)
Top Riders: Rui Costa (9th), Diego Ulissi (48th), Niccolo Bonifazio (65th), Sacha Modolo (85th), Rafael Valls (86th)
What can you say about a team that finished 12th out of 17 teams in the UCI WorldTour rankings? They gave it their best shot? Lampre-Merida actually improved its UCI ranking over the past couple of years, when it finished 14th out of 21 in 2014, 14th out of 19 in 2013 and 14th out of 18 in 2012. They also won 30 races via 15 different riders, showing their talent is spread throughout the team.
Leading the last third of the WorldTour pack seems to be where the team, which has one of the longest-running sponsors in the sport, is comfortable. But a few key wins in 2015 pushed Lampre up in the rankings, a trend they would no doubt like to see continue.
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The season got off to a surprisingly good start for Lampre-Merida when Rafael Valls sneaked past all the pre-race favourites like Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) Tejay van Garderen (BMC) and Rafal Majka (Tinkoff-Saxo) during the Queen stage at Tour of Oman to take the stage win and the overall.
The team took stage wins at the Presidential Tour of Turkey and at Paris-Nice before going on a roll at the Giro and bringing home four stage wins with Jan Polanc, Diego Ulissi and Sacha Modolo.
Rui Costa continued the success with a stage win at Dauphine, followed by Kristijan Durasek’s stage win at Tour de Suisse.
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