Germany has a new professional cycling team! The team "Stölting Service Group" starts as a Pro Continental team in 2016. After three successful years as an operator of a Continental team, the subsidiary of the Stölting Service Group GmbH of Gelsenkirchen, the Stölting Cycling GmbH, takes the next step.
 

Stölting was set to merge with the the Danish pro continental team Cult for the 2016 season. However, the Danish energy company pulled out of their sponsorship last week, claiming that Stölting hadn't fulfilled their contractual obligations.  The announcement put the future of the team in danger.

As of 01.01.2016, the team will be on the start line in the world's second highest category of professional cycling "Pro Continental" under the name "Stölting Service Group". Team members of "Stölting Service Group" are internationally successful and experienced professionals from Germany like Linus Gerdemann, Fabian Wegmann and Gerald Ciole and also very promising young talents such as Lennard Kämna. Besides the German core, the team consists of internationally successful riders, particularly from Denmark, like Rasmus Guldhammer, Alexander Kamp and Mads Pedersen.

First sporting director will be Jochen Hahn, who had great success with Stölting already in recent years. Stölting will start with a German license. With positive race results, the team hopes to get into major international challenges next year

Shareholder and managing director of the "Stölting Service Group", Hans Mosbacher says: "We spent a lot of time and work in the past few days to secure the future of the team Stölting 2016. We thought to have found a reputable sponsor and partner with "Cult" with whom we wanted to go together in the coming years. All the more, I am pleased that in spite of the failure of "Cult" we have succeeded in a very short time, to ensure the budget for next season. In the planning and execution of that, the entire team stood excellent together.

"With the current solution, we are also fulfilling our social responsibility in relastion our employees. The wrongful termination of our previous contractor who refuses to meet its obligations in 2016 for incomprehensible and incorrect reasons will be clarified legally. I want to thank the whole team most cordially again."

"I am convinced of the quality of the team "Stölting Service Group" in 2016," Gerdemann said. "The solidarity of the whole team, operators and sponsors in 2016 in dealing with the current extraordinary situation shows me that we have already successfully completed a team-building measure as a team that no survival camp in the world could offer."