Fabian Cancellara's Tudor Pro Cycling 'dare to dream' about WorldTour one day: "Step by step we want to reach a higher level"

It is only the second year of Tudor Pro Cycling at the professional level, but the team of owner Fabian Cancellara was already present at the start of numerous WorldTour competitions in 2024. And the former Olympic and World champion is obviously happy about his team's showings so far.

"It's not like I started with an idea on a blank sheet of paper," he reflects in an interview for WielerFlits. "You know a team can always fall apart. When I heard that about sixteen Swiss athletes would lose their dream and perspective on cycling, Raphael Meyer and I said to each other: 'We have to help, we have to support those guys'. And that's what we did. We found a number of partners, new material contracts and then fortunately everything could continue."

Yet creating a professional team was not the immediate goal. "At the start, that was not our dream, no. That came over time. Only then did I realize how cool it would be to have a Swiss team at professional level again, with Swiss values ​​and Swiss athletes. And now we're halfway through the second season. It is truly fantastic what we have achieved with everyone involved. I am very happy and also very proud that a project like this comes to life and commands a place at the top of cycling."

Rumours speak of Marc Hirschi's move to the team for next year, but there are several other strong Swiss riders in the peloton: "It would of course be fantastic to one day have all the top Swiss riders in our team, that is truly a dream. But at the end of the day, everyone chases their own dreams. We cannot change that. Only when individuals see our potential, our values ​​and the project we are working on and say: 'I want to commit myself to that', then that is very nice."

"Step by step we want to reach a higher level," Cancellara explains. "In the beginning we were a nice team and many riders thought we were a cool team. But after just a few months we turned out to be direct competitors. In order to continue, we quickly started negotiating with new riders in 2023. On August 1 – the date on which it is allowed – we immediately announced all our transfers. Swiss precision? Haha, you could call it that. At the end of the year, Marco Brenner was added as a golden opportunity."