In a consequence of the demise of two World Tour teams with the end of 2013 season, many of former Euskaltel and Vacansoleil-DCM cyclists found themselves left without any reasonable perspectives on continuing their professional careers in the upcoming year, and thus made a decision to hang on the bike. After four riders of the Basque team: Mikel Astarloza, Egoi Martinez, Adrian Saez and Andre Schulze all announced their retirements earlier this year, as it was reported on cyclingnews.com today, Wouter Mol of Vacansoleil was forced to share their fate.
According to Sporza, even though the 31-year old Dutchman had stayed in touch with several professional continental teams, eventually none offered him a contract and experienced cyclist called it a career. However, former Vacansoleil rider doesn’t intend to entirely quit on racing on a bike..
"I am not stopping cycling, but will not be a professional anymore. I'll do amateur races for fun," said Mol to the Dutch broadcaster RTV Noord-Holland.
The most remarkable achievement of nine years long career was an overall victory in Tour of Qatar in 2010 and in Grote Prijs Jef Scherens in 2008. Throughout those years, apart from his latest employer Vacansoleil (2009-2013), Mol raced for P3Transfer-Batavus, Fondas-P3Transfer Team, Team Skil-Moser and Team Moser-AH.nl.
20.05: GP Mazda SCHELKENS |
20.05: Paris - Troyes |
20.05: Ronde van Limburg |
12.05 - 21.05: Tour d'Algérie |
22.05: GP de la Ville d'Annaba |
20.05 - 24.05: Cycling Tour of Albania |
24.05: GP de la Ville d'Alger |
23.05 - 25.05: Tour of Estonia |
25.05: Due Giorni Marchigiana |
25.05: ZLM Omloop der Kempen |
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