His compatriot Matteo Jorgenson will leave Movistar for a new pasture this winter, but Will Barta is happy and will settle for the Spanish team in the near future. Barta's 2-year extension was only publicly announced a few weeks ago, but the new contract had already been agreed months ago.

"Historically, it was a really Spanish team, and that's still the case, but I think it also makes it a really tight team," Barta told cyclingnews, "You don't have a lot of different groups, so everyone's meshing really well and you know it's 1 team." It feels like one big family."

When Barta first signed with Movistar two years ago, he was a rider still looking for himself after a career repeatedly conditioned by serious injuries. The 2019 U-23 Giro d'Italia was his first professional debut since he broke his femur.

Barta finally appeared to have struck a stride in the fabulous Vuelta a España at the end of the 2020 season, when the pandemic interrupted, but only maintained that a few weeks later her femur was broken in a training crash in Norway. That setback effectively ruined the 2021 campaign with EF, and he was still feeling the effect during his maiden season at Movistar.

"I don't know what's going to happen in life, but to be honest, I think it was as challenging as you get with cycling," Barta said. "I was really lucky to have a nice team like Movistar growing up because I was bouncing from one team to another that was injury or something like that.

At the beginning of 2023, Barta was hoping that the campaign might be a turning point in his career, given that he had just been able to enjoy a significant uninterrupted winter for the first time in 5 years. That optimism grew even more when he was assigned a race schedule tailored to his strengths.

"When you get these injuries, your role in the team changes a bit. You'll be the guy to fill in, you don't have such a clear schedule," Barta said. "But this year I was really lucky that the team gave me a clear run of the race, with time to train and time to go to altitude. I was able to optimize things for the first time in my career, and I really benefited from it. I had the best values in training, my best figures in racing, I was in racing more often and I really enjoyed it.

A strong display on the Saudi tour and 5th place overall in the O Gran Camiño in May suggested that Barta was on the right track, he played firmly in both the Tour de Romandi and Giro d'Italia and continued to catch the eye throughout the rest of the spring. He would later go on to take a second behind rampant Brandon McNulty in the time trial at the US Championship.

"For me, it feels like we're finally back to the baseline," Balta said. "It was the first off-season since 2017 that I haven't had foot surgery," he said. It's one thing to have surgery on your hand or something, but having surgery on your foot every year has been very difficult. This has definitely been the best season I've had and it's something I can build from.

"I think the first two weeks of the Romandi and Giro were my highest level of the year, but I was really happy to be back in the race through the spring. It was a really nice feeling.

These displays ensure that Barta's future at Movistar is guaranteed long before the end of the 2023 season, and the continuity of this long stay in the team shows a break with the precarious nature of his first season as a professional.

In those tumultuous years, the only stable water seemed to have come in the 2020 Vuelta, where Barta became 22nd overall and came within 2 seconds of beating Primauro Glitch in the Mirador de Ezaro Time Trial. That show served as an important addition to his show reel, but most of all, it was a memory that supported him through the ensuing tribulations. Without it, Barta admitted, he could not have stayed in the game.

"It meant I tasted how it could be," Barta said. "Six weeks later I broke my other leg and it was super hard, so I honestly think I wouldn't be a professional cyclist if I didn't have that Vuelta - by someone's choice, not just myself.

"I think it really kept me going because I still had that memory of how great it can be. But I also really love cycling and training and racing. Love never really went away. There were times when I was challenging, and I thought I would never go back to the level I am now or the level I am now, but I really enjoyed it, so I wanted to try it."

Now 27, and with 2 unbroken seasons behind him, Barta will target further progress in 2024. The race program is still defined, but its intentions are already clear.

"I definitely think it's possible to take another step up after a healthy season that I've been in the race, rather than making up the numbers," he said, "I just want to improve next year." 私は2.1で成功し始めました2.Pro Race, and now I want to transfer it to the world Tour.”