An attack from one of the Bissell riders. (Image credit: Trish Albert / www.southeasterncycling.com)
A trimmed-down Bissell Pro Cycling Team will focus on stage racing for 2012 with a roster that director Omer Kem believes will provide multiple options for stepping onto GC podiums and repeating as the top team on USA Cycling's National Race Calendar.
The UCI Continental Team, which is entering its fifth year with Bissell Homecare as the title sponsor, will once again focus on NRC events and the UCI stage races but with a squad that has been cut from 15 to 11 riders. Not returning for 2012 are Rob Britton, Andy Jacques-Maynes, Shane Kline, Paul Mach, Jay Thomson, Kyle Wamsley and David Williams. New for 2012 will be former U23 riders Chris Barton from BMC and Carter Jones from the Trek-Livestrong Development Team.
“I really wanted to have a more focused team,” Kem said. “And I think that meant being a little bit smaller. We had 15 riders last year, and it's just not a big enough schedule, just racing domestically, to warrant that many riders.”
USA Cycling's plan to pull criteriums from the NRC and create a separate series with the National Criterium Calendar also helped drive the personnel decisions. Kem said the team will hit some races on the NCC schedule to gain the experience necessary to defend Eric Young's USPro citerium jersey, but the main focus will always be the stages races.
“We proved that we can race a crit,” Kem said. “We've won the US crit championship two years in a row. But I don't think crits have ever really been a priority. And this just kind of reaffirms that for us, that we want to be the best stage racing team in the country with the NRC stage races and the big UCI tours.”
Bissell hopes to develop a stage race attack from multiple quarters led by an experienced core group of riders who can “captain” the team on the road, Kem said.
Behind the four road captains, Bissell has a group of young riders who Kem believes will have their own moments in the spotlight this season.
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“I've got my captains,” Kem said. “I've got those four guys I named as being kind of the elder riders, but my other seven guys, all these guys know that I believe in them, and I think that they can all step up and win races next year. I think the future is these younger guys, and that's really where I shaped the team for 2012.”
Kem said the multifaceted attack Bissell hopes to develop may also be the only way to unseat RealCyclist's Francisco Mancebo as the top domestic stage racer. Mancebo won all the NRC stage races in 2011 except for the Joe Martin Stage Race, which Bissell's Pipp won.
“Racing against a guy like Mancebo, really what I learned last year is that you have to have options,” Kem said. “The only NRC stage race he lost last year, we won because I had four different cards to play going into the last day. If you only have one card to play, or even two cards to play, you're not going to beat him. You need at least three, and you hope you have five, so four is pretty good.”
The team will kick off the 2012 season with a training camp in Santa Rosa, California from Feb. 25 to March 4, ending with the four-day Merco Cycling Classic stage race that starts on March 1.
“The race allows a nine-man roster per team, so we can race quite a few of the guys and see where they're at going into the start of the year,” Kem said.
Bissell will pick things up again at the traditional start of the U.S. season at San Dimas Stage Race, then on to the NRC-opening Redlands Bicycle Classic before heading east for the Tour of the Battenkill one-day classic.
Growing up in Missoula, Montana, Pat competed in his first bike race in 1985 at Flathead Lake. He studied English and journalism at the University of Oregon and has covered North American cycling extensively since 2009, as well as racing and teams in Europe and South America. Pat currently lives in the US outside of Portland, Oregon, with his imaginary dog Rusty.
