Rio Grande Elite Cycling to Race the 2023 UCI 2.2 Vuelta Ciclistica Ecuador!

The Rio Grande Elite Cycling Team is excited to announce that we have accepted an invitation to race the UCI 2.2 Vuelta Ciclistica Ecuador on November 12th to 19th! The team couldn’t be more excited for Rio Grande Elite’s first official international trip to race the “Road to Middle of the World”, and cannot thank our partners enough for supporting the team in this endeavor.

Team Manager Rees York, “While this is our first international trip, many of Rio’s roster have raced internationally in the past on composite teams, including Henry York who took 3rd place in a stage of VCE last year. We have high hopes for our team to compete alongside some very good international teams. Our riders all come from elevation, so it will be interesting to see how they can perform in the high Andes Mountains.”

Henry York (Far right) taking 3rd place on stage 4 of Vuelta al Ecuador in 2022.

Roster:
Henry York, Tyrel Fuchs, Ethan Moyer, Jordan Miller, John Borstelmann, Ian Lopez, Taj Krieger

Staff:

Team Director: Gustavo Carrillo

Mechanic: Pablo Valenzuela

Assistant: Josue Canastuj

Stages:

This race takes our riders all throughout Ecuador, from the coastline into the high Andes Mountains. With over 60,000 feet of climbing over 8 stages, it will be a tough race. See the info/graphics for all 8 stages below!

How this race invitation came to be:

This trip has really been years in the making. We’ve wanted to add an international trip to our calendar after coming out from COVID, and we planned a few trips where the races ended up getting cancelled. Last year, a few of our riders got the opportunity to guest ride on teams racing in Central America, and that’s where we became introduced to Gustavo. His professionalism, race acumen, and ability to navigate the complexities of racing in foreign countries were noted by our riders and gave us confidence that we could pull off a successful trip with him at the helm. Between his support, and our Rio partners, we believe we can take on the teams racing in this event such as Movistar, Isreal-Premier Tech, Canels, Team Medellin.

How to Watch:

Races will be broadcasted locally, and streamed online. We will post on our socials with more information when it comes out!

What’s Next?

Stay tuned to our social media pages throughout the next week as we introduce our riders individually!