Life after Euskaltel-Euskadi was always going to be tough for Samuel Sánchez. The Basque team was all he had ever known as a professional cyclist – 13 years in the distinctive orange kit and the best part of a decade as their leading light. Yet, after a turbulent couple of years since the team folded in 2013, the 37-year-old claims to have found a “new family” at BMC Racing.
Sánchez exudes calm and contentment as he sits down with Cyclingnews at the American team’s winter camp in Spain in mid-December. It’s a state of mind that can be attributed to having a contract in the bag before the season has actually begun, a luxury he hasn’t enjoyed since the fall of Euskaltel.
In fact, this is Sánchez’s first winter camp with BMC. He first signed for the team in February 2014 after a period of uncertainty for all involved with the Euskaltel team, and last winter he failed to come to an agreement for a renewal, eventually re-signing late in January 2015. However, just six months passed before he was once again putting pen to paper, the BMC management so impressed with the work he was doing for Tejay van Garderen at the Tour de France that they handed him a 2016 deal before they’d even reached Paris – where he ended up 12th overall.
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“For me it’s the perfect situation, knowing your future before the new year,” Sánchez says of a state of affairs the vast majority of cyclists take for granted. “I’m at the team camp, I’m relaxed, and I’ve been able to get to work knowing that my future is on the bike.
“Jim [Ochowicz – BMC general manager – ed.] is a person with whom I can speak very directly. At every point since the start of the year he told me that the decision to continue would be mine, that I had a place in BMC. I had the space to focus on my cycling.”
Euskaltel-Euskadi was a team that carried a sense of identity that is hard to come by in a sport where sponsors come and go, teams change names, and kits change colours. Its Basque-orientation, sponsor, name, and orange kit were all constants during Sánchez’s 13-year spell there and, at 34-years of age, he’d have been forgiven for wondering if he’d ever settle anywhere else again.
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