Cycling: The Movistar team had two reasons to celebrate when Italian Adriano Malori won the individual time trial of the 63rd Tour of the Sarthe: In its 36-year history, the Spanish team can now look back on an impressive 800 victories.
The ProTeam was founded in 1980 under the name Reynolds. In 1988, the team with the Spaniard Pedro Delgado triumphed for the first time in the Tour de France. From 1990, the Spanish bank Banesto became the name bearer and main sponsor. The Induráin era also began at this time. After the Paris-Nice victory in 1990, Miguel Induráin and the team won the Tour de France five times in a row from 1991.
A sponsor change in 2004 brought another name change with it. The team initially started under the name "Illes Balears-Banesto", in 2005 under "Illes Balears-Caisse d'Epargne" and a year later under "Caisse d'Epargne-Illes Balears". At the end of 2006, the tourist office of the Balearic Islands withdrew as a sponsor, the savings bank Caisse d'Epargne, which had already acted as the main sponsor in 2006, was the sole namesake of the team from 2007. The Spaniard Alejandro Valverde won the overall classification of the UCI ProTour in 2006 and 2008, in which the team has participated since 2005. Another notable achievement for the team was Spaniard Oscar Pereiro's victory in the 2006 Tour de France.
In 2011, the telecommunications company Movistar became the new main sponsor of the team. In 2013 and 2014, the Movistar team won the overall ranking of the UCI WorldTour - Alejandro Valverde also won the individual ranking in 2014.
The 800th victory in the team's history was achieved in the individual time trial on a 6,8 kilometer route. Adriano Malori won by a margin of 9 seconds over Britain's Alex Dowsett, who also competes for Movistar. Third in the individual time trial was Ramunas Navardauskas (Cannondale-Garmin) of Lithuania, another 6 seconds back.
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