PROLOGUE
The Vuel ta a España mar ks the inal grand tour for BMC. What legacy does the red and black jersey leave behind?
Insight, opinion and interviews
It’s not the end for the BMC team, but it is the end as we know it. The team’s distinctive black and red jersey, a ubiquitous sight in professional European racing over the last nine years, is currently getting its last grand tour airing at the Vuelta a España. After seemingly heading out of the sport completely following the death of Andy Rihs, the team’s long-term benefactor, and subsequent difficulty in finding a new sponsor, the team manager, Jim Ochowicz announced a surprise new deal had been set up with the Polish shoe and handbag maker, CCC. The new squad, which will remain at WorldTour level, pending an extension of its licence, has retained Greg Van Avermaet and the rump of the Classics squad. In July, Ochowicz said around 75 per cent of the team’s current staff would be retained, with some staff from the ProConti squad CCC currently sponsors integrated into the new structure.
Yet the team continues in more straitened circumstances. Its stageracing wing has largely been dismantled. Richie Porte leaves for TrekSegafredo. Tejay van Garderen joins EF-Drapac. Rohan Dennis, Damiano Caruso and Dylan Teuns go to Bahrain-Merida. The team’s writing-down of its stage racing ambitions – for the near future at least – marks the end of an era for a team which, in some ways, modernised the grand tour racing template.
BMC’s ambitions in the realm grew rapidly when it secured Cadel Evans in 2010, when the team was still a ProContinental outfit. Evans finished fifth at the Giro that year, but he went on to have a bruising encounter at the Tour in 2010 when he crashed early on the first day in the Alps and saw his GC ambitions end a couple of days later. The team returned the next year with the strategy of staying right at the front of the peloton for long stretches on flat stages, and then leaving Evans to look after himself in the mountains. The plan, which helped Evans win the yellow jersey, has since become the norm for top GC teams, and is used most effectively by Team Sky. “There we spent all our energy in the wind,”
BMC’s top domestique Michael Schär said. “Now we always have the same approach at the Tour. We bring two or three rouleurs who are all strong Classics riders and then they bring the climbers. The other teams are doing it as well.”
Evans’s Tour win stoked the team’s bankroller, Rihs, to go on a big spending spree ahead of 2012. The team focused on the Classics. Newcomers to the roster that year included Philippe Gilbert who was reportedly secured on 3m a year following his super 2011 season, and perennial Roubaix hopeful, Thor Hushovd. With Greg Van Avermaet, Alessandro Ballan and the young Taylor Phinney all in situ, it was a formidable Classics line-up. However, it also prompted accusations of ‘financial doping’ with which other teams could not hope to compete. Rihs dismissed them saying, “We don’t race for stature, we race for cycling.”
Others accurately predicted that so many headline riders would find it hard to work in harmony. In the first two years, third places in Flanders, Roubaix, Flèche, Gent-Wevelgem and E3 were the best it got. Hushovd eventually retired, Gilbert left after four years and Ballan’s career fizzled out after his implication in the Mantova doping inquiry. It wasn’t until 2017 that Greg Van Avermaet finally wore a BMC jersey on top of a monument podium, at Paris-Roubaix.
BMC raised the standard of team time trialling to new levels. Since the discipline was reintroduced at the World Championships in 2012, they have won the event twice and finished off the podium just once. The squad has won every WorldTour TTT bar two since the 2015 Dauphiné. They set the standard, and though other teams have consistently finished within seconds of them, the benchmark is now lost.
The team continues next year, probably in CCC orange and certainly in a diminished capacity outside of the Classics. Though the team’s results may not have matched the financial investment at times, the money and ideas that the old BMC ploughed into racing created a legacy that should linger on a while.
“If you don’t take the time to sit back and think what success actually means to you and what you want, then you’re just chasing a ghost ” Tay lor Phinney, on inding a purpose and perspect i ve in cyc l ing. See page 88 for ful l story “EVANS’S TOUR WIN STOKED THE TEAM’S BANKROLLER, RIHS, TO GO ON A BIG SPENDING SPREE AHEAD OF 2012”