Welsh cycling team aim for 2019 Tour de France
Last updated on .From the section Wales
A new Wales-based professional cycling team, which aims to compete in the 2019 Tour de France, has been launched.
Former professional cyclist Eifion Weinzweig, 27, of Bridgend is behind the team, named We Are Wales.
Weinzweig, of Bridgend, has named one of his former coaches, Frenchman Yann Dejan, as its performance director.
The team's home will be in Cardiff and its training base in Brittany, France, while Weinzweig says the squad will include at least four Welsh riders.
Weinzweig wants the team to begin competing at third-tier professional level in 2016 and progress from there to the sport's premier continental road races.
A Tour de France-standard team can cost from 10m Euros annually up to more than double that.
Weinzweig said: "We're starting off at continental level for the first two years, [then we want to] stabilise the riders, stabilise the finances and the business model and then move up to the second division in year three.
"That's when we can start officially trying to get into the Tour de France."
