Canadian team confident heading into National Championships
Svein Tuft at the front of Team Spidertech. (Image credit: Tour of Japan)
Canada’s sole UCI Pro Continental team hopes to finish to Tour de Beauce at the top of the leader board following the sixth and final stage held on Sunday in Saint-Georges, Quebec.
The team has three riders sitting in the top ten in the overall classification, a strong performance that bodes well for them at the upcoming Canadian National Championships held in Burlington, Ontario next weekend.
Francisco Mancebo (RealCyclist.com) is currently leading the overall classification at the Tour de Beauce ahead of Bernardo Colex (Amore & Vita) in second and Alex Howes (Chipotle Development) in third.
SpiderTech p/b C10’s top placed rider is Svein Tuft who sits in sixth place following his stage four time trial victory. Francois Parisien sits in ninth place overall and Pat McCarty is in tenth heading into the stage six finale, held on a challenging 12.5 kms circuit totally 125 kms. The team’s roster also includes Andrew Rendell, David Boily, Zach Bell and Bruno Langlois.
"All our guys are in really great shape right now and we have three riders in the top ten at the Tour de Beauce," Tuft told Cyclingnews. "It is a good position to be in coming into really difficult circuits. We have the numbers to play with here. The Saint-Georges circuits are some of the hardest finishing circuits that I know of in a stage race."
The Tour de Beauce is the only UCI-sanctioned stage race in Canada and is a highlighted event on SpiderTech’s annual race calendar. "This was an important race for us this week and we had to try to put a lot of pressure on Mancebo and his team," said Boily, who place second in stage five. "We have been very aggressive here."
"Every race is important to us because we want to make a name for ourselves and to get invited to bigger races every year," he said. "We need to be competitive at every race that we go to and that is why we are working very hard."
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The race is held one week prior to the Canadian National Championships where Tuft is eyeing a seventh national time trial title. The team is also going to use its strength in numbers to try and secure a national title in the road race.
"It is very good to see that we are doing well at the Tour de Beauce, we are riding hard and working very hard and everyone is confident in their legs, and that is encouraging for us going into Canadian Nationals," Boily said. "We will have one of the biggest team at nationals. It is very important for us to win the national championships."
Kirsten Frattini is the Deputy Editor of Cyclingnews, overseeing the global racing content plan.
Kirsten has a background in Kinesiology and Health Science. She has been involved in cycling from the community and grassroots level to professional cycling's biggest races, reporting on the WorldTour, Spring Classics, Tours de France, World Championships and Olympic Games.
She began her sports journalism career with Cyclingnews as a North American Correspondent in 2006. In 2018, Kirsten became Women's Editor – overseeing the content strategy, race coverage and growth of women's professional cycling – before becoming Deputy Editor in 2023.
