2011 Team Europcar season

rdf:langString 2011 Team Europcar season

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rdf:langString The 2011 season for the Team Europcar cycling team began in January with La Tropicale Amissa Bongo and ended in October with Yukiya Arashiro's performance in the Japan Cup. It was the team's twelfth season as a professional cycling team, although its second as a UCI Professional Continental team. Unlike fellow former UCI ProTeams Cofidis, FDJ, and Geox–TMC, they did not seek the status for 2011, thus in order to compete in any UCI World Tour event, the team had to be invited in advance, by race organizers. The season was one of the best in the team's history, with 20 victories and a Tour de France with multiple noteworthy performances. Team leader Thomas Voeckler wore the yellow jersey as race leader for ten days; the second such occurrence of his career, after also leading for ten days in 2004. Unlike that race, however, Voeckler poised himself as a serious overall contender and took fourth place overall; the best result by a French rider since 2000. While he spent most of the Tour riding in Voeckler's service, Pierre Rolland won one of the marquee stages, up Alpe d'Huez, eventually finishing 11th overall and winning the young rider classification. Voeckler was one of the more prolific winners of the early season, tallying eight victories in 2011, the last of them obtained on May 8. The veteran Frenchman won five stages at four stage races, plus the overall crowns at the Tour du Haut Var and the Four Days of Dunkirk along with the single-day Cholet-Pays de Loire.