international talent development project

As a general conclusion we can summarize that Erasmus+ program has helped ITD Team financially to realize our mission and vision, but it also supported the teams in rethinking some processes of the collaboration model and accelerating best practice exchanges among the ITD Team partners.We strongly believe that such a cross border collaboration could be copied by other cycling teams (even when active in other countries than ours) and by teams from other sports disciplines.A key success factor for the ITD Project is the common vision of all participating teams on development and innovation. The development of sportive and extra-sportive potential of the riders will always be at the core of our decision-making. Feed talents with new international challenges, with the aim to grow, to learn and to connect. The performance as such is only a component of the overall development of the riders. This network of like-minded youth cycling teams in various countries (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, France) will all contribute to realize this mission through:-a state-of-the-art youth education program-a vision beyond results-a willingness to contribute resources to this unique ITD cross-border projectFor this ITD project we have been focussing on the sportive and logistic collaboration. We have limited the legal structure of ITD Team by renewing on a regular basis our Memorandum of Understanding.To support this cross-border collaboration model we have initiated a clear structure:- full day 1-on-1 meetings in a central place (Brussels)- regular Skype calls to allow shorter communication calls- development of templates to support exchange of key learnings- exchange of videos regarding training exercisesKnowledge exchange really helped all ITD Team partners:- informing at first hand the other partners regarding national race calendars, but also about new or changes regulations- establishing contacts with local, regional and country federations to get selection- introduction to get selected for important international racesIn all our meetings, informal calls and get togethers during joint training camps or joint races we made optimal use to exchange best practices. By copying and applying these success stories some partner teams:- have successfully increased the number of youth cyclist members- have introduced different organization schemes- have implemented a different budget and year planning- have improved their logistics set-up- have increased the knowledge to make training more efficient and transparantBecause of different vacation periods over the countries, we found a solution by introducing mini training camps, mainly limited to 2-3 days and focused on some specific training needs in a well described discipline (track or cross trainings, climbing stages, ...). Advantages were numerous and resulted in saving costs by sharing on technical assistance during service course.The young riders could improve their language skills, exchange cultural differences and build international friendships.Because national federations are increasing barriers and implementing new regulations that are not supporting cross-border structures and are discouraging youth riders being part of foreign teams, we needed to be very creative for joint races. So more and more we are participating with a selections of riders from ITD Team partners in international races, and less with mixed cycling teams.Furthermore we organized three cycling races per year under the umbrella of 'EU youth cycling series'. We gradually build up our presence & promotion on websites & social media with first making optimal use of the websites of all ITD partners, followed by the distribution of movies of training excercises and cycling techniques. In a third step we have introduced an ITD Team Facebook (5500 followers on all five Facebook pages) to finally start up an ITD team website.