Written by Canadian Nippon at 09:22 28/7-2022
It hard to imagine that a team with twenty-three official results and nine of those being victories having anything to really complain about but that simply isn`t the case for the Canadian Nippon Cycling team as the team has had huge early season success with four results in the opening four days of last season but since Norway Tour the team has pretty much been nowhere.
Vuelta a Valparaìso was a write off after the opening prologue stage and so the team quickly switched focus to the Nederlandse Tour and this became very clear early on in the tour that once again the team was going to have nothing but bad luck on the teams side.
As like most tours the prologue opened the tour and this should have been a slam dunk for Conan Guillot as the only rider on the team to have any TT; not to mention the profile of the race matched close to the skill set of said rider, but Guillot would have an off day and crash during the stage meaning he would finish a distant 31st on the stage that he should have had a chance at victory. At this point the team wasn`t worried too much as they had Irving Watts in top form for the tour and was the teams main priority so looking to the bright side heading into stage 2.
Groningen – Hengelo would give Irving Watts his first chance to take control of the tour but as usually recently Watts had an off day while most of his lead-out train would either have mechanics or crash meaning Irving Watts was even lucky to finish the 19th that he did on the stage but once again meant after two stages into a tour the team had nothing left to fight for but stage victories.
The off-days continued even outside of the tour as the team would send young riders to Critérium du Lac de Neuchâtel (U23) where Eli Dauphin would be among the favorites for a podium if not a victory but he was struck by the off-day bug and would place 11th in the race.
Heading back to the Nederlandse Tour and off-days for the top form Watts would continue for the remained for the tour with 20th in Hengelo – Eindhoven, 17th in Eindhoven – Maastricht, 19th in Utrecht – Rotterdam and 20th in the final stage Den Haag – Amsterdam putting an end to the torcher of the Nederlandse Tour. Best place rider in the tour was Guillot; who will be given the lead in the future if the team signs back-up for this tour in the future.
The team was also looking forward to racing in ITT World Championship at the end of the season but the team also expected to claim a few points in the OCM standing to claim a 50th overall ranking to be able to sign up for the race but due to the bad legs and lack of results were unable to sign up for the ITT World Championship when the race sign up started but the team lucked into a few quick results afterwards in Fiji Coast Race; where Watts still in top form would crash but still finish in the top four with a 4th place finish in what one would explain as messy race with Ensio Järvinen, and Albert Nairn also crashing during the stage with luckily no one seriously injured.
A day later the TT team would punch their ticket to the ITT World Championship at the Baghdad ITT as the team would have three rider finish the race in the top twelve with Abel Frint placing a respectable second and Jacky Berton a distant nineth but it was enough point meaning the team would be able to sign-up for the ITT World Championship. This means the team will not have any riders ready to be in Top form so barring an outside result nothing much is going to be expected heading into the ITT World Championship now.
The team is still going strong to finish off the season as they are currently signed up for Aalborg Timetrial with an outside chance at a result followed by the World Championships ITT to end the season as of right now as team is still debating if they should let the U23 riders have a chance at the U23 World Championship ITT; with no expectations but it might be a few weeks before the U23 team will be ready to race again.
In somewhat more positive new training of Errol Mansell has been completed with a little bit of a max early situation as he trained 167 of 180pts but will boast 228 CB ability or 272 total CB ability with 186 side of TT once TT centered; which is the goal at the moment. This means Canadian Nippon has a CB captain for the first time in the teams history and will be looking to add to the CB aspect of the team in the near future with Paraskevas Abadiotakis most likely the next trained rider as pave pacer as he boast a 217 Max potential in CB or 276 max total CB aspect. In the short term will it be enough to have Mansell race with a sprint train instead of the pace pacer to place well in the CB races? Time will tell but that is also the current plan while we train Paraskevas Abadiotakis as a pave pacer.
Sponsorship issues: One would assume that a team that wins a jersey in a big tour and climbs higher than expected in the OCM ranking; the team was expected to stay around division 3 this season but outscored their own expectations would mean the sponsors should have been falling all over themselves to sign with the Canadian team but that simply hasn`t been the case with the team as of last week having no sponsorship before just signing World Tours Airways in the past few days.
“It was our own fault we ended up with no sponsors and a bit of bad timing as we had offers for TS and bottles but we like to have cash offers since we are still very much a development & training team so we turned down the offers expecting better offers to quickly materialize but that isn`t what happened so we are a good two or three weeks if luck before we have a full range of sponsorship again.” Added the PR Manager for the team.
What next for the team moving forward into the new season? Honestly we are currently unsure at this time since we should lose 263 points in the first five days of the season so we should quickly drop back to division two to start the season so without looking at the actually calendar it is hard to predict our future races. We need to set about resetting team spirit again as we do at the start of most season by sending riders in breakaways and captain of races that they cannot win but they come out of feeling just that bit more important.
Looking ahead quickly and Volta ao Porto looks like the first obvious target with Conan Guillot having a good chance to win stages and maybe an outside chance at the green jersey at the end of the tour based on the fact that the tour boast three TT stages and if not then Watts will also have a few chance to score stage wins. Guillot is the obvious choice since we haven`t burned his TF yet and will most likely won`t trigger this season.
Haute-Normandie also look like a nice starting tour for Errol Mansell with the CB aspect giving him a chance at the overall mixed with side results for our TT riders and Watts on stage victories.
But once again that is the future and we need to finish the season strong.
Subscribers: 12
| |
Comments
More then solid as it by far my best season here every; which is why I find it hard to complain still!!
Very solid season still.
|
Other Team's Press Releases
|
|
|
