Vacansoleil 2010 roster: "we still have wacky names."

//Vacansoleil 2010 roster: "we still have wacky names."

Vacansoleil 2010 roster: "we still have wacky names."

That's a weird name. How do you spell that?

After an highly successful 2009 ProTour campaign, Vacansoleil has finalized their roster for the coming season.

Team manager Daan Luijkx admitted the departure of several riders was a serious blow as far as odd-ball names were concerned. “We lost Win, Gerben, Reinier, Thijs and Aart,” said the despondent Daan.

All was not lost, however,  as he signed Wouter Mol and Gorik Gardeyn. “We feel like this gives us a good mix of wacky Belgian names that cycling fans outside of Belgian will have trouble with or at least smile about,” said Luijkx.

“We’re strong across the board with nutty-sounding names to go along with Borut Bozic, Lieuwe Westra and and Wout Poels. We can guarantee our sponsors plenty of media exposure and amusing mispronunciations.”

Vacansoliel will face strong name competition from several teams, especially the Basque squads, who are capable of fielding tongue twisters like Gorka Verdugo, Inaki Isasi and Amets Txurrula.

Nevertheless, Vancansoleil’s Luijkx remains confident. “We will be stronger in 2010. The 2009 season is a fairytale and we have to work hard to do out-do our kooky names,” he said.

We say good luck in 2010, Daan. Last question — what’s with the extra “a” in Dan? Kinda kooky.

By |2024-03-18T16:25:54-07:00October 25th, 2009|Uncategorized|2 Comments

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2 Comments

  1. henkio October 27, 2009 at 8:03 am - Reply

    Oh man, I feel offended again (means you write good 🙂
    These names were used before us Euros even set foot in 'Dan-land'.
    Gerben, Reinier, Thijs, Daan…. Nice normal Dutch names. Hell, Daan is even the most used name for newborn boys in The Netherlands right now. As far as I know it's still a Dutch team. (Did you know Johnny Hoogerland's official first name is Thomas?)

    Sorry for doing this, but my name is Wouter 🙂 A very common name here.

    Now if my name was Lance, Tyler, Floyd, Davis or Blake i would have been picked on a lot at school because these names sound ridiculous to us.
    But ok, Gorik would have done that to.

    • walshworld October 27, 2009 at 10:46 am - Reply

      Hey Henkio, thank God you have a sense of humor. And thanks for the info– I'm gonna add it to the post. You'll be famous in some small way.

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