Team Geox-TMC, currently called Footon-Servetto, has announced the signing of David De la Fuente to the team and confirmed that Giampaolo Cheula will stay with the team in 2011. The team, run by Mauro Gianetti, is officially new for 2011, but is taking on the majority of the current Footon-Servetto riders and staff.
De la Fuente spent six years with Gianetti’s team, formerly known as Saunier Duval-Prodir, before riding with Astana in 2010. As one of Spain’s best climbers, he was one of Alberto Contador’s key mountain domestiques in this year’s Tour de France. He had no victories this year, but won the GP Miguel Indurain in April 2009 and the tough Munich to Hesselberg stage of the Deutschland Tour in 2008.
Cheula has been with Gianetti’s team for just one year, after spending five years with British-registered team Barloworld. Like De la Fuente, Cheula is a hardworking domestique and has few recent results of his own, with his most recent victory coming in the 2008 GP Nobilie Rubinetterie-Borgomeanero.
The two riders join the team’s many other new signings, which include 2008 Tour de France winner Carlos Sastre and Denis Menchov, the winner of the 2005 and 2007 Vueltas a España and the 2009 Giro d’Italia.