The mayor of Estepona will receive tomorrow Joxean Fernandez ‘Matxin’, sports director of UAE Team Emirates and discoverer of Pogacar, champion of the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France 2024.

The public reception will take place on Wednesday, July 24, at 9:00 p.m., at the Casa de Las Tejerinas.

Joxean Fernandez ‘Matxin’ was named ‘Tourist of Honor’ by the Estepona City Council in 2021 for choosing our city to reside for long periods of time.

The mayor of Estepona, José María García Urbano, will receive tomorrow Joxean Fernández ‘Matxin’, sports director of UAE Team Emirates, and discoverer of the Slovenian cyclist Tadej Pogacar, champion of the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France 2024. The City Council has organized this event open to the public to congratulate ‘Matxin’, resident in Estepona for long seasons’ for these new sporting achievements, as Pogacar has swept the last Tour de France winning six stages and leading the race in 19 of the 21 stages.

Discoverer and boss of Tadej Pogacar at UAE Team Emirates, Joxean Fernandez ‘Matxin’ (53 years old) has been linked to cycling for a lifetime, but never had among his ranks a rider like the Slovenian, who last Sunday was crowned in Nice as Tour de France champion for the third time and completed a Giro-Tour winning double that had not happened since 1998, with Marco Pantani.

The 2024 Tour de France leaves us with two big winners in this edition: Slovenian Tadej Pogacar, and his team, UAE Emirates, which has lived up to expectations with one of the strongest teams in Tour history to help ‘Pogi’ conquer his third Tour after conceding to Jonas Vingegaard in the 2022 and 2023 editions.

Joxean Fernández ‘Matxin’ (Basauri, Vizcaya, Spain, December 22, 1970) is a sports director of professional cycling teams. He was always linked to the panorama of this sport, outstanding cyclist in lower categories, amateur from 1989 to 1991, becoming with 21 years old sports director of different amateur teams. In 2021 he was named ‘Tourist of Honor’ by the City Council of Estepona for choosing our city to reside for long periods each year and for being one of its best hosts.

In 2001 and 2002 he starts as sports director in professional category, and in 2004 he generates his own professional team, with Saunier Duval as main sponsor.

It is in October 2017 when UAE Team Emirates makes official the signing of Joxean Fernandez ‘Matxin’ as Sport Manager of the team. From that moment ‘Matxin’ begins the reconstruction of the team under a policy of incorporating young talent, ahead of the big dominant teams so far.

In 2019, Tadej Pogacar, Slovenian rider and winner of the Tour de l’Avenir, joins the team. Matxin thus manages to reunite with a rider he discovered in juniors and was unable to bring to Quick-Step in his scouting period. The season ends with 29 wins for UAE Team Emirates, including 3 stage victories and Pogacar’s podium in the Vuelta a España.

In 2020, Matxin’s policy of signing the best young riders available was even more pronounced (McNulty, Covi, Bjerg, Ardila…). UAE Team Emirates reached 33 victories. Under his leadership, Pogacar wins the first Tour de France.

In 2021 the bright future of the team is already present, with Pogacar comes the second victory in the Tour de France plus two monuments of cycling: Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Lombardia.

In 2022 from the squad led by ‘Matxin’ there is the feeling that they still want more. Great signings are arriving to keep the team at the top and the commitment to young people is still in force with new talents arriving under the guidance of ‘Matxin’, such as Juan Ayuso.