Mark Cavendish, Tony Martin, and their Omega Pharma-Quick Step teammates will be cycling under Etixx-Quick Step next year.
Etixx-QuickStep jersey. Photo: Cycling Weekly
Etixx, who were unveiled as the team’s new main sponsor for next season at the Tour de France’s second rest day in Carcassonne, manufacture a range of sports-nutrition products, and are owned by the current main sponsor – the pharmaceutical company Omega Pharma.
Omega Pharma have been involved with cycling since 2003, when they were co-sponsors of a previous guise of the team, Quick Step-Davitamon, to publicise their Davitamon brand of vitamins.
Omega Pharma then switched to Belgium’s other big cycling team, Lotto, as the team’s main sponsor via their various brands: first as Davitamon-Lotto from 2005 to 2006, then as Predictor-Lotto in 2007, to showcase their pregnancy-test products, before peddling Omega Pharma’s anti-snoring products, Silence, as Silence-Lotto in 2008.
The parent company returned to the Quick Step set-up in 2012, and has been the main sponsor of Omega Pharma-Quick Step ever since, but 2015 marks the return to publicising Omega Pharma’s subsidiaries, and Etixx will now headline the team for the next three seasons.
Team manager Patrick Lefevere is only too aware how valuable such a sponsorship commitment is in professional cycling, especially in today’s economic climate, in which teams often only survive from one season to the next as main sponsors come and go.
“You know how you sometimes have those days when you’re working hard but you’re not feeling happy – when you don’t appreciate how happy you should be?” Lefevere asked Cyclingnews. – Cyclingnews
