A few days after Lifeplus – Wahoo, a new women’s professional team has decided to join the MPCC in 2024: Doltcini – O’Shea. The Continental level team has 17 riders representing 8 nationalities and includes the experienced British rider Hayley Simmonds (stage win in the 2017 Thüringen Ladies Tour), her fellows and rising talents Niamh Murphy (3rd in the 2022 juniors Tour of Flanders) and Matilda McKibben, the Irish rider Kelly Murphy as well as multiple Israeli road race champion Omer Shapira, coming from EF Education-Cannondale, another MPCC member.
Its team representantive Patrick Hayes states : « We wish to join the MPCC because we feel it is important that cycling is a fair sport and that the health of participants is safeguarded and that performance enhancing drugs are not used nor are medical treatments misused to gain advantage. As a very small team, perhaps the UCI team with the smallest budget, we think it is important that all teams are totally transparent and that it is important to observe the principal as well as the letter of the rules and not to use either substances that are not yet prohibited or in doses which are below the official limits and that larger teams do not misuse the medical resources at their disposal .Despite only being a small team, we feel it is important all teams support the MPCC not just the large ones. »
This new membership should encourage other Women’s Continental and World Tour teams to join us and become strong and credible actors in pro cycling.
