At the end of the 2015 season, 23-year-old Estonian Mihkel Raim faced a major career decision. He was riding for a French amateur team and had just finished 15th in the under 23 road race at the Richmond World Championships. He could stay with the familiar amateur team that had a solid race program in the heart of the sport, or he could gamble on turning professional with the Cycling Academy, an up-and-coming Continental team from Israel, a country not exactly well known for its cycling pedigree.
Raim had come to know the team's manager, Ran Margaliot, through an Israeli teammate on the Amore & Vita squad in 2013, and although they had talked about Raim joining the Israeli squad in 2014, the timing just wasn't right. When he saw Margaliot at the world championships in 2015, the team manager extended to him an invitation to attend the Cycling Academy's unique "selection camp" later that fall. He hasn't looked back since.
Raim accepted the offer, quickly earned a spot on the team for 2015 and went on to be Cycling Academy's most prolific winner, taking five UCI victories this season, including the overall at the Tour of Hungary. The team jumped to Pro Continental status for 2017 and didn't waste any time signing Raim to a two-year deal that will take him through 2018.
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"It was the right decision, because I had an opportunity to stay in an amateur team for one more year, but I wasn't anymore under-23, and it's quite a risky business," Raim told Cyclingnews this week during the team's camp in Israel.
"So for sure it was a quite hard decision, because it's a new Israeli team, and everybody in cycling can talk, but you need to do something. But something inside me told me to go for it. So I took this risk, and it was the right decision."
Raim took top 10 finishes at the GP Adria Mobil in the Czech Republic and then in Tro-Bro Leon, the tough 1.1 race in France that includes dirt roads and has a high-quality field. He got a real confidence boost when he finished third in the final stage of the Fleche du Sud and was 12th overall. He followed that with second in the bunch kick of the opening stage at the Tour of Estonia and finished third overall there.
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