Lucas Euser and Steve Bauer Spearhead Canadian Team in Paris
In 2008, Josée Larocque & Steve Bauer founded Team Spidertech and challenged themselves to turn the Canadian team into a ProTour-competing outfit. The team, founded as Team R.A.C.E. Pro and operating at Planet Energy in 2009, is now officially called Spidertech Powered By Planet Energy, or simply Spidertech. It is the only Canadian team which competes in the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) Continental Circuit. The team will take another step toward its long-term goal when it competes in the Paris-Corrèze on August 4-5th, the squad’s first European race.
"It's something I've always wanted to do,” said Bauer. “It's a little bit of fate, a little bit of 'maybe it's the right thing to do now.' It's kind of hard to say exactly, because I've been asked a lot of times to be director of a (foreign) pro team and I never jumped into it.”
Steve Bauer is the best cyclist that Canada has ever produced. 14 times in the yellow jersey of the Tour de France, 1984 Olympic silver medalist with an extensive Classics resume, the Spidertech manager envisions his team as a dyed-in-the-wool Canadian project, and hopefully the first team from that country to enter the Grand Tours.
"The main goal is giving our Canadian athletes the opportunity to get there. We want to take our guys with us. If we end up being a development team, and that's as far as we go, then that's where we'll ride. But I think the goal would be to reach the Pro Tour, or as a minimum, Continental Pro, so we're working with our best riders, and carrying them through," said Bauer.
Of the 15 Spidertech riders, 13 are Canadian and only two are over thirty, so it looks like Bauer’s vision of bringing a Canadian squad to the world stage is coming to fruition. The team has only raced in the Americas so far, but has set up a temporary European base in Kortrijk, Belgium, in preparation for a series of UCI 2.1 and 2.2 events in Northern Europe, starting with the Paris-Corrèze.
"We're only one team, right?" said Bauer. "In France, they have three teams, in Italy four, five teams, Belgium a couple of teams. We only need one and I think for Canada that would be amazing."
The riders’ ProTour experience is limited to Lucas Euser, who will lead the team through the coming weeks. Euser admits that the experience is lacking, but Bauer says that that’s the point of the team, to give Canadian’s more opportunity to gain international experience.
“A handful of us have done the Nations Cup with U23 teams," said Euser to Cyclingnews. "There's some amateur experience too so we're not a fresh US team and Quebec has really adopted the European style of riding and training so we know what to expect."
Euser took most of the season so far to rehabilitate after suffering from two broken ribs when he and Dan Martin, of Team Garmin, were hit by a car while training. The timing was advantageous to Spidertech, who received the benefit of Euser’s support during the growing pains of their inaugural season.
"You've got to build a programme and earn some legitimacy in the field,” said Euser. “We're the new kids on the block, and you've got to start from scratch. Steve Bauer wants to do it right, so over the next few months some big decisions are going to be made, and I hope that we go pro-continental and in the next few years.”
Euser rode his best season so far in 2008, when he won the Univest Grand Prix and was fourth in the US road championships. The 26-year-old American will enter the 2011 season refreshed and competitive.
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