In 2011, Victor de la Parte (Team Vorarlberg) already spent one season at Caja Rural at the pro continental level. But the Spaniard did not have a breakthrough season. After several stints at different continental teams, the 29-year-old shone in the Vorarlberg jersey and with his overall win in the Tour of Austria (2.HC) he got into the spotlight.

With the win, de la Parte got attention from bigger teams and finally ended up at the Polish team CCC Sprandi."There were a lot of good deals, but I have finally decided to join CCC because in recent years it has evolved to a great team where I'm going to get my freedom," said de la Parte in an interview with radsport-news.com.

In his new team, the climber hopes to be able to do his first World Tour race. "I certainly hope that we get an invitation to the Giro again or perhaps to the Vuelta. We have a great calendar, with many races that I could not do in the past," said de la Parte, who also has the Vuelta al Pais Vasco on his wish list.

That he has achieved top results late at 29 years of age has its reason. "I've only started riding at 21 years of age. I had no special technical or tactical skills. So I had to learn even more, the first years were tough," admitted de la Parte who little by little has approached the top and finally had a breakthrough in 2015.

"I lost two kilos during the winter and thereby felt good in the mountains. I also got a lot of help from Team Vorarlberg, it was like a family to me," said the Spaniard who also won the Fleche du Sud in Luxembourg, was third in the Oberösterreich Rundfahrt Austria-tour and fifth in the Tour of Taiwan.

"It was a very good year for me. The attractive race calendar helped me a lot and I could actually keep my form throughout the year. I was ultimately not surprised by the results because they were simply the result of hard work," he concluded.