The team that dreams of seeing Filipino riders in the WorldTour

Cor Vos

“The goal for us is to send a Filipino rider to a higher level of cycling,” said Pako Ochoa, general manager of the Philippines’ highest-ranked Continental team, Victoria Sports Pro Cycling. He was speaking to Escape from the team’s house in Alicante. “We want someone to be able to jump to the WorldTour. That would mean a lot for us.”

It’s a bold ambition. The Philippines has never had a rider contracted to a team in cycling’s top two divisions, and no Filipino rider has ever won a UCI race in Europe, either. The Philippines is currently ranked 14th in Asia in the UCI’s nations rankings, behind the likes of Vietnam, Malaysia, and Korea.

The Victoria team is currently mid-way through its fourth year of existence, having been inaugurated at the beginning of 2023 as cycling began to grow in popularity in the Southeast Asian nation.

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“When we started the team at the end of 2022, we were coming out of the pandemic,” said Ochoa, who also rides for the team. "In the Philippines at the time, there was a big boom in the industry of cycling. A lot of people started cycling, commuting with bikes, and everything like this. I was working with Victoria Sports for a long time already. They said that they were interested in starting a team for the Philippines.”

Victoria Sports is the largest fitness, sports, and leisure facility in the Philippines, situated within a 51-floor tower block in the capital of Manila. With three Continental teams already running in the Philippines, the management at Victoria wanted to do something different than merely race the local scene and a selection of Asian races. Victoria had bigger ambitions.

“What we saw, what the Philippines was lacking, was the opportunities to go out more, especially to do more European races," Ochoa said. "And that's sort of the idea that started everything. We wanted to put Filipinos racing in Europe.”

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