KEEPING THE DREAM ALIVE
A week before the Vuelta a España in mid-October, the final race of this weird 2020 season, and Nicholas Dlamini is one of over 100 riders still officially listed without a contract for next year. His team, NTT Pro Cycling, with whom he turned pro three years ago, is at the time without a title sponsor for 2021. The clock is ticking. Normally, at this late point, new contracts would be long sewn up and the uncertainty of whether Dlamini will be racing next year is stressful.
It doesn’t help that the transfer market this year has perhaps been more fought over and inflated than ever before. The potential closure of NTT and the takeover of CCC by ProTeam Circus-Wanty Gobert have pushed almost two WorldTour teams’ worth of riders into the market. Then there’s the covid-19 pandemic which has caused a global financial crisis that has hit across the entire spectrum, meaning teams, as well as their sponsors, don’t have the same budgets they might have had before. For Dlamini and others like him, the racing shutdown meant his chances to show what he can do and prove his worth have been severely limited.
“The market is a bit of a mess. The last time I checked there were 150 WorldTour riders that haven’t been confirmed yet,” Dlamini tells on Skype from his base in Girona. “Obviously it makes everything a lot more difficult knowing that there are not a lot of spots available in teams at the moment,
