Steve Bauer pleased with progress of SpiderTech-Planet Energy squad

The team has not dominated in North America or Europe in 2010, but the Canadian SpiderTech powered by Planet Energy squad has quietly and methodically built an impressive list of wins and strong performances that could see the team expand into the Pro Continental ranks next year.

Fresh off Guillaume Boivin’s stage win Thursday at the French UCI 2.2. Mi-Août en Bretagne, and with a pair of Canadian ProTour races on the horizon, SpiderTech manager Steve Bauer spoke with VeloNews about the team’s 2010 season, and what’s in store for 2011 and beyond.

The win in Brittany, the team’s 13th victory at a UCI race this year, was its biggest yet, coming just days after Boivin’s second-place finish at the Sparkassen Giro Bochum, where he took the field sprint ahead of HTC-Columbia’s André Greipel after Milram’s Niki Terpstra crossed the line alone for the solo victory.

Other UCI wins for the team include stage wins at the Tour of Cuba, the Tour of Uruguay and the Tour of Mexico.

And though they’re not yet wins at major races, this is just the sort of progression Bauer envisioned when he began the Canadian program in 2008 as Team R.A.C.E Pro, (an acronym for Race Against Cancer Everywhere).

The team continued in 2009 as Team Planet Energy, backed by a Canadian environmental energy company; its biggest win last year came at the Tour of Missouri, when Martin Gilbert took a field sprint win ahead of Andrew Pinfold and Thor Hushovd on the final stage in Kansas City.

That win helped earn the team an invite to this year’s Amgen Tour of California, where Boivin and Francois Parisien each registered a pair of top-10 stage finishes. The team’s highest-placed GC rider in California was Lucas Euser, the team’s sole American, who finished 18th in his first race back from a major collision with a vehicle in 2009.

“We’ve had a good season,” Bauer said. “We started 2010 with a lot of high ambitions. We reinforced our roster and signed a lot of good young Canadian riders. We’ve won 13 international races, including stages in Mexico, Cuba, and now in France. When we look at the big races, the Amgen Tour of California was the highlight. We showed we are able to race with the best, and race well.”

Now backed by kinesiology-tape company SpiderTech, the squad again showed its class at the Philadelphia International Championship, with Boivin finishing sixth and Gilbert seventh.

“At Philadelphia we were 100 percent in the game to win the race,” Bauer said. “We made some minor mistakes in the final stretch, and it was a little disappointing because we were capable of winning and didn’t, but that’s part of pro racing, and we’re pretty happy that we’re in the game.”

The team has also faced its share of adversity this year. Top sprinters Ryan Roth and Keven Lacombe were both sidelined during California; Roth with a patella injury, and Lacombe to mononucleosis. And at Sparkassen, Andrew Randell slipped and fell hard, fracturing his left femur, requiring surgery.

On a roster that boasts several proven winners, Boivin, who turns 21 in September, may just be SpiderTech’s biggest talent. In June 2009 he won the Canadian national road championship outright, however federation rules prohibited the 19-year-old from claiming the elite title; instead he was awarded the under-23 national championship, while second-place finisher André Tremblay took top honors.

“Guillaume is riding very well,” Bauer said. “He really showed his capabilities at Sparkassen. It was a tough circuit race, very technical, very champion-esque, raining and windy. Only seven riders made the final selection, and Guillaume was part of that select group, and he clearly took the sprint ahead of Greipel.”

Boivin’s talent is in some ways reminiscent of the team’s figurehead. Bauer’s prolific 20-year career included three national road titles, two Olympic appearances and a fourth-place finish at the 1988 Tour de France. He also finished fourth at the 1991 Paris-Roubaix, wore the maillot jaune for nine days during the 1990 Tour, and was a Motorola team member, alongside Lance Armstrong, when their teammate Fabio Casartelli died from a crash during the 1995 Tour.

During Ryder Hesjedal’s impressive Tour last month, Bauer’s name was often recalled, as the greatest-ever Canadian performance at the Tour. Bauer said he was both impressed and pleased with the attention the Garmin-Transitions rider brought.

“Ryder’s performance at the Tour this year was commendable,” Bauer said. “It was exceptional, and very exciting for Canadian cycling, especially the way he races — aggressively, always in the breakaways, always making attempts to gain time or win a stage. It was impressive that he put out so much energy and finished up with a phenomenal fourth on the Tourmalet.

“From my perspective, it’s exciting for Canadian cycling. It sheds more light on our program. People see that achievements like that are doable, and that helps what we’re doing. It makes what we’re doing believable. It just proves that when you give someone a chance to perform, then you will see great results, and that’s what happening.”

And that’s just what Bauer needs to grow his program into a Pro Continental squad in 2011, with an eye on the ProTour in the years to come.

Using Jonathan Vaughters’ Slipstream Sports program as a model, Bauer is hoping national rallying points — such as Hejedal’s breakthrough Tour, this year’s successful Vancouver Olympic Games and the upcoming ProTour events — will encourage Canadian athletes and sponsors alike.

“Having the Olympics in Canada was extremely successful, and a huge international event like creates a sporting buzz,” Bauer said. “I was recently speaking with another director, who was telling me that in Norway there is now a huge number of young athletes in the club-team realm; so many that they can barely take care of them, and it’s mainly because 10 years ago Thor Hushovd started winning at the international level and became an icon. I can draw parallels to that, such as now, with Ryder, he’s a national hero. When you have that sort of core leadership of pro athletes and role models, behind them is a generation of young athletes wanting to aspire to the same thing.”

Ironically, Hushovd now rides for a team sponsored by a Canadian bike brand, which would seem a perfect fit for the nation’s most prominent team. However Bauer downplayed a scenario that might bring the Cervélo and SpiderTech organizations together.

“In all honesty, I think Cervélo is missing some Canadianism in their focus,” Bauer said. “And I think a team like ours could bring that in a partnership. I don’t know if that’s a reality or not. But our goals are clear, we want to bring up a Canadian team, with a Canadian philosophically, offering opportunities to top Canadian riders and partners, while balancing that with whatever international talent and structure is required to be competitive.”

SpiderTech will complete its European campaign at month’s end before some riders finish out their season at the Montréal and Quebec ProTour races September 10 and 12. Though the team can’t field its own squad at the ProTour events, due to its UCI Continental status, Bauer hopes to see several team riders selected to the composite eight-man national team the Canadian federation will send to compete. Either way, the SpiderTech brand will be on display, as the kinesiology-tape company is also a sponsor of the national team.

Next year, however, Bauer hopes he will be sending his own squad, with a UCI Pro Continental designation. For the moment, however, he’s keeping potential 2011 recruits and sponsors close to his chest.

“A lot is in balance in the next six weeks,” he said. “It’s impossible to talk about the riders we’d like to have on the team, and it’s difficult to speak about whether we can achieve Pro Continental status. I know the UCI will be strict in Pro Continental registrations, and we still have to ensure that all of our sponsors are in line with our goals. But the long-term ambition is to grow and evolve within the capabilities and infrastructure we have. For what I believe is a fairly modest budget we’ve been able to achieve a few things. I think we can continue in a positive manner. We have great partners and sponsors who share our goals, and want to be part of our evolution.”

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Neal Rogers

An interest in all things rock 'n' roll led Neal into music journalism while attending UC Santa Cruz. After several post-grad years spent waiting tables, surfing and mountain biking, Neal moved to San Francisco, working stints as a bike messenger and at a software start-up. He moved to Colorado in 2001, taking an editorial internship at VeloNews. He never left, and is now Velo's editor in chief. When not traveling the world covering races, Neal can be found riding his bike, skiing, cooking, or attending a concert. Follow him on Twitter at @nealrogers.

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