A stage win, seven top five finishes, 14 top 10 finishes, four days in the Polka Dots, fifth best team and 13th in the general qualification, that’s what Team MTN-Qhubeka have to show after their debut at the Tour de France. It was the stuff of dreams, including the now famous Mandela Day victory. At the start of the Tour, nobody in their wildest dreams would have expected things to go this well.

It’s a journey that has been in the making for a few years already and with all the momentum behind them, it’s time to switch gears for this little team that can. First on the agenda is to see where they stand in terms of next year’s Tour. You would think a team that finished in the top 10 overall would get an automatic entry, but not so.

At the moment, Team MTN-Qhubeka are registered as a Pro Continental team, but they hope to shift to the World Tour rankings, which will give them automatic entry into the World Tour races, which include the Tour de France.

“We have to speak to the UCI (world cycling’s governing body) on August 1,” MTN-Qhubeka team principal Doug Ryder told Cyclingnews.com. “The rules can be a little bit loose because they would love another World Tour team but that decision has got to be made in the next two weeks.

“Once the Tour de France is finished we’ll have a sit down with our partners and strategise and plan for that and so we’ll know in the next two weeks if we should go World Tour or if we should stabilise the team with what we have at the moment. We’ve always taken small steps to go up and we never want to embark on something we can’t sustain. That will probably be the only factor that could see us not making World Tour next year.

“All the young talent will come from Africa but if you want to go World Tour then you have to have a lot of depth,” Ryder said. “The classics are where we want to bring in more depth; we want to bring in more riders who can win races.

“The classics are the oldest most famous races in the world and with massive amount of exposure in terms of media and people that watch them and we want to get our MTN-Qhubeka charity to as many people as possible.”

What could fuel their charge is the fact the team has been linked with signing Mark Cavendish. MTN-Qhubeka have had some discussions with the British sprinter, but funding remains a challenge for a team still in its relative infancy.

But with signing such big names also come the challenge of a team possibly changing the way it approaches races, something Ryder says the team will not compromise on.

“For us, what is important is the culture that fits into the team and the value that it can bring. We’re not going to change our culture, we’re not going to change the strategy of our team. Those things are really important to us.”

While trying to bring in some big names, MTN-Qhubeka will also have to try to hold onto some of their own riders. Some of MTN-Qhubeka’s young stars will have caught the eye of a number of other teams on the circuit and when a team is bigger and has more money, the challenge of holding onto riders can be somewhat of a challenge for smaller teams. But the more teams compete at the World Tours, the more interest will come from sponsors. More interest from sponsors mean more money and the ability to sustain the team.

MTN-Qhubeka will compete at this year’s Vuelta a España, scheduled for August, once again as a wildcard entry. The euphoria of the Tour de France will take some time to wear off, and whatever happens it will no doubt serve to galvanise the team to go on to achieve more great things. DM

Photo: MTN Qhubeka team riders Merhawi Kudus Ghebremedhin (R) and Daniel Teklehaimanot (L) of Eritrea are photographed with fans prior to the start of the 8th stage of the 102nd edition of the Tour de France 2015 cycling race over 181.5km between Rennes and Mur De Bretagne, France, 11 July 2015. EPA/SEBASTIEN NOGIER