{"id":424792,"date":"2026-01-20T05:23:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T05:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/424792\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T05:23:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T05:23:09","slug":"movistars-priority-is-to-build-around-his-greatest-strength","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/424792\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cMovistar\u2019s priority is to build around his greatest strength\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nA rider with Ivan Romeo\u2019s engine is rare. Movistar Team<\/a> know that, which is why every decision about his future and how they want him to develop will be crucial, both for his own growth and for the long-term direction of the Spanish team in the WorldTour. So which version of Romeo does Unzue really want?<\/p>\n

\u201cOur main priority is to help him progress,\u201d Unzue began. \u201cTo keep betting on his greatest strength, which is his ability to move perfectly across almost all kinds of terrain.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOn a given day he can be a great domestique, a vital rider who can help another teammate win. We know he is a great time triallist and that he is only 22 years old. His room for improvement is very big, so we have to be patient. You have all seen that he is also a great communicator, a different kind of rider,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Not a high-mountain GC rider<\/p>\n

As Unzue continued talking about his star rider, he became more open. And at one point he made one thing very clear: it is unlikely that Romeo will become a general classification rider, and that his result at the 2025 UAE Tour was more of an exception.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that high mountains will probably make certain goals unreachable for him, like winning WorldTour stage races overall. But I repeat, he is 22 years old and has a very big margin to grow. That means we will have to wait and see what his real ceiling can be,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n

Taking advantage of the moment, Perico Delgado was also asked for his view on Ivan Romeo. His long and unforgettable career perhaps led him to see the current Spanish champion slightly differently from Unzue. This is what the two-time Vuelta winner and 1988 Tour de France champion said:<\/p>\n

\u201cIvan is in that phase every rider of his age goes through: a young rider who is projecting himself as one of the best in the future. In 2025 we saw that he is someone who likes to compete under pressure. Living with pressure all the time is very hard, because you force yourself to win, and you almost never will. But he has that hunger to make his own mark, and I think over the next decade we are going to see the development of what could be one of the stars of Spanish cycling.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ivanromeo<\/p>\n

Romeo won a stage of the Dauphine in 2025<\/p>\n

Ivan Romeo\u2019s 2026 calendar<\/p>\n

These comments from Eusebio Unzue and Perico Delgado came just days before Ivan Romeo\u2019s first race of the 2026 season. Expectations will be high for a rider who will begin his campaign at the Challenge Mallorca.<\/p>\n

For now, the only races confirmed in the Spanish champion\u2019s calendar are the five classics in the Balearic Islands:<\/p>\n

Trofeo Calvia \u2013 January 28
\nTrofeo Ses Salines \u2013 January 29
\nTrofeo Serra de Tramuntana \u2013 January 30
\nTrofeo Andratx \u2013 January 31
\nTrofeo Palma \u2013 February 1<\/p>\n

In all of them, Romeo will race alongside Enric Mas. The two Movistar leaders will share the roads in a season that also marks the start of the new UCI three-year cycle from 2026 to 2028, which brings back the threat of relegation.<\/p>\n

For Movistar Team<\/a>, the last three-year cycle was calmer than the one before. The Spanish squad effectively secured their WorldTour licence a year earlier than expected thanks to an excellent 2024, when they collected a large number of UCI points, especially in the Grand Tours.<\/p>\n

Back then, Ivan Romeo was still just a promise who had recently become under-23 world champion in the time trial. He was already highly rated, but he did not yet carry the weight within the team that he does now. Over the next three years, the squad will depend heavily on him and on the results he can deliver.<\/p>\n

If Romeo is not the rider who scores the most UCI points for Movistar in this new cycle, it would be a surprise. For that reason, even though only the Challenge Mallorca races are confirmed for now, the rider from Valladolid is expected to appear in many of the biggest events on the calendar, with one date almost certainly standing out above all others: the 2026 Tour de France.<\/p>\n

Whether as a domestique, as Unzue suggests, as a stage hunter or as a pure time trial specialist, Ivan Romeo is already the present and future star of Movistar Team<\/a>. However he ends up specialising, his engine backs him up, and he has already shown he can be exceptional in almost every type of race.<\/p>\n

The main figure in the first episode of season five of El Dia Menos Pensado will be back on his bike in just a few days. Can he better his strong 2025 season in a 2026 where expectations and pressure will be even higher?<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A rider with Ivan Romeo\u2019s engine is rare. Movistar Team know that, which is why every decision…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424793,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,39563,1000,222748,39552,201833,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-424792","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-eusebio-unzue","12":"tag-interview","13":"tag-ivan-romeo","14":"tag-movistar-team","15":"tag-pedro-delgado","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}