CERATIZIT Pro Cycling Closes a Chapter

There are two kinds of people: those who see September as an ending and those who see it as a beginning. At Orbea we try to be the latter. And yet, today the breeze carries that melancholy feeling when you know this salt on our skin will fade after the last swim. Eleven seasons later, CERATIZIT Pro Cycling has decided to lay down the towel on the shore.

This is how we at Orbea feel about the end of CERATIZIT Pro Cycling, a team that, for eleven years, believed firmly in a project until they made it real. CERATIZIT didn’t just compete; they fought to lift women’s cycling to the highest level. And they succeeded. They were pioneers at a time when few invested in women at the elite level, when the old cliché still lingered that “girls can’t race.”

Over the years, the team claimed dozens of victories: 63 on the road, 13 in the WorldTour, and an extraordinary haul on the track: 16 world titles and 4 Olympic medals. It is the accounting of conviction. Above all, CERATIZIT became a space for development and growth for some of the best riders.

It has been home to more than 70 riders, cared for with devotion by every member of a staff we will dearly miss. With these professionals we proudly watched Lisa Brennauer dominate every race before her retirement. Together, just months ago, we looked forward to a brilliant season for Sandra Alonso and Daniek Hengeveld.

Among those triumphs, one unforgettable image: Cédrine Kerbaol in white as the best young rider of the 2023 Tour de France Femmes and, the following year, the first Frenchwoman to win a stage in the modern Tour: a victory that still moves us.

We at Orbea walked alongside CERATIZIT for the past eight years, learning that a bicycle can open doors once locked. This alliance was never just technical: it was, and remains, a way of being in cycling; believing in women when belief still seemed an eccentricity. Thank you for letting us be part of the journey.

There is still one race left. Baltimore, Saturday, September 6. The Maryland Cycling Classic will be the stage where CERATIZIT closes the circle. Yet in saying farewell, they also point us to a beginning.

Because September is also the time to open notebooks and make new plans. At Orbea we will continue to believe—as always—that the next page will be written by the same riders who pushed this wave. We will cross paths again. The sea always returns what it loves.