There is a little bit more to this story than is being shared. Pro Tour Cycling breaks the story here in this article.
Headlines broke on April 6th as Bahrain-Victorious announced on twitter that the team has decided to “part ways” with 23 year old Alejandro Osorio.
The team manager Milan Erzen explained to VeloNews yesterday that Bahrain-Victorious has released Osorio due to “Multiple contract breaches” here are Milan’s words from this interview.
“The letter went to the UCI one week and that’s it. Some things you can’t accept. We have 100 people on our team and the rules are for everyone. We gave him one warning after a couple of things but he made them again. So we decided to terminate the contract. It’s more than during the races; he went outside the COVID bubble. We have all the documents.”
Milan Erzen to VeloNews
By chance, on route from Barcelona to Bogota PTC founder had run into Alejo boarding the same flight. Having a great relationship with Osorio, almost like a little brother, it was clear that Osorio was down, and sad about something. He soon began to express his frustrations with what had been going on with the team, and said that he didn’t understand why the people from the team were treating him so poorly. We sat with Osorio on his flight back from Barcelona to Bogota, Colombia and over the course of the 10 hour flight, and then 6 hour car drive due to the closed Medellin airport, we got all of the details from Osorio’s perspective before the team had announced this statement on twitter.
It’s important to note and shape the perspective of who Alejandro Osorio is; a 23 year old young man, coming from a very humble family of working class people in Carmen Viboral, Colombia. Alejo knows how to ride his bike, not negotiate professional contracts, and has put trust in his manager to handle all of his professional matters in relation to business surrounding his career, with Alejandro’s best interest in mind of course. It’s through this journey in travel together that we learned how vulnerable this young man is, and in our opinion what a terrible position the team and his manager had put him in, completely negating the fact that Alejo is a human being and that an opportunity in the World Tour is a life changing one for him and his family.
Being fully transparent in this article it’s also important to mention that Alejo did make some mistakes. He did step outside the bubble, he did accidentally go to the wrong restaurant in the hotel, he did go and buy a SIM card so that he could speak with his family on the road, he admitted to making these mistakes but he did these things unaware that he was breaking rules. Alejandro never imagined that these little mistakes would lead to a contract termination, especially a month after they occurred. It’s no excuse but these bubble rules are broken by riders in the world tour every single day, it’s not a rare occurrence.
The Covid protocol breaches came from the UAE Tour where Alejandro was shared a set of rules verbally in English, a language he is just starting to learn and does not yet speak, or understand. The team’s director at the race Aritz Arberas is from Spain and is a native Spanish speaking person, refused to communicate to Alejandro in Spanish, only in english. According to Osorio, Aritz only spoke to him in Spanish with a verbal lashing after he had made some mistakes not knowing the rules. Why? We’re not sure. Alejo continually asked Aritz to help him by communicating in Spanish, but Aritz declined and told him he needed to understand English.
The UAE Tour ended on February 28th, 2022. However, Alejandro didn’t receive notice of his termination until far later. At Strade Bianche on March 5th, Alejo was set to do his best performance for the team, however he got food poisoning the day before the race, was vomiting, unable to start the iconic race. Although Osorio was terribly disappointed that he could not race Strade, It seems that it was here the relationship between Alejo and the team went south. After sitting in limbo without races in Andorra for nearly a month, no races upcoming on his calendar, and a sick grandmother in Colombia, Alejandro requested to return home to Colombia. According to Alejo, the team granted him permission to return home but was soon followed up by a termination letter and proposed settlement agreement issued by Milan Erzen from Bahrain Victorious.
The settlement agreement offered to Osorio would basically terminate his contract, give him nothing going forward, leave him without a team, and no opportunity to race in the future. The pressure to sign this agreement from Alejo’s agent, and team management was like nothing we’ve ever seen. It seemed wrong, almost as though the management had been incentivized some way to get Alejo to sign this absolutely bogus agreement. The agreement literally made no sense for Alejo to sign as it offered to only pay him the month the team already owed him. The violation points listed in the termination notice aren’t even valid under the UCI’s code, so the entire situation was extremely confusing. Threats saying that Alejo would never get the opportunity to race again if he didn’t sign the agreement came through, and that once he signed the agreement he would be given offers from other teams, and more.
After consulting with a lawyer from another World Tour team, we received instructions for Alejandro to file everything correctly with the UCI, and access the bank guarantee that all world tour teams are subject to. The UCI has the power to freeze the funds owed to Osorio. In Theory, the team doesn’t have grounds to terminate Osorio’s contract this way, and will likely end up paying out the entire 2 year salary. However, the intimidation set forth by the team and management was like nothing we’ve ever seen. It was an incredible display of thug like bullying from Erzen, and what seemed like pure manipulation from the management to get this kid to throw his contract and opportunity down the drain.
Just hours before the team announced on twitter that they had “parted ways,” messages to sign the agreement came through to Alejo. The messages included things like it was his last chance to “do this quietly without releasing any press.” Alejandro responded that he had started the process with the UCI to dispute the termination. It was then that the team announced on twitter that they had “parted ways” and allegedly already filed with the UCI themselves the previous week.
It all happened very quickly for Alejandro. He went from being in the best shape of his life in January, breaking many records here in Colombia on the most popular climbs, eager to race and waiting for opportunity to perform, and of course excited about his opportunity to race in the world tour with Bahrain-Victorios, to sitting with us in a hired pick up truck driving from Bogota to Medellin, not knowing where his future may go. From our perspective, It’s sad that people in the sport are allowed to operate this way. The kid has dedicated his life to cycling, represented his country at the world level, won stages of huge races, and shown himself against the top riders in the world on numerous occasions.
Alejandro is currently back in Colombia, and wants to race. It’s important that Alejandro takes all of the correct steps in the future with this case, and future racing opportunities. The 23 year old has learned a lot from this experience. Osorio has to look for another team to sign with and will do so upon approval from the UCI. Alejo currently has offers from Colombian professional teams, but ultimately wants to race in Europe. We’ve set up some calls for Alejo in the coming days with 3 World Tour teams, and a pro-conti team. The kids talent level is way too high to let slip through the cracks. He’s definitely shook up from all of this, and needs all of the support that he can get from the cycling community during this time.
As a bit of a personal note, in the end we learned some pretty valuable things through this experience.
1) The world tour can be a cut throat environment where the humanity of individuals is completely taken out of consideration. Alejandro Osorio is perhaps the most talented rider we’ve ever seen. His numbers in training are up there with the likes of Pogacar, and the sky is the limit for this kid. However, the potential doesn’t matter to his former team. Perhaps the worst part is that the team didn’t take the human factors of his early season performance into consideration, nor did they consider the impact that all of this could have on Osorio’s entire life.
2) The Colombian people’s reaction was so cruel. After 8 years of PTC being based in Colombia, seeing the way that many responded to the post on social media was truly disappointing. Saying things like “doper” or “lack of dedication” “good luck driving a moto taxi,” and many more hurtful comments. These actions from the Colombian people have been truly despicable and as much as they’d like to believe it there isn’t just another Alejandro Osorio kicking around, the kid is an incredible talent, and deserves to race at the highest level of sport.
3) When everything is good, the people want to be by your side but when things turned hard for Alejo he had nobody. A bit of a life lesson here to be careful of those who you surround yourself with, and thankfully Alejo had a good friend with some contacts to help guide him through the hardest time of his life.