For Axeon Hagens Berman General Manager Axel Merckx, every new season means a large turnover of riders. This year his UCI Continental development team has eight new names on its 16-rider roster. Such is the nature of running a U23 development team.
Despite losing half his 2016 riders, the 2017 roster could be one of the Merckx's strongest to date. Three of his returning riders, Adrien Costa, Nielson Powless and Logan Owen, scored some of the team's biggest results last year.
Costa was runner-up at the Tour of Utah among his other impressive results, while Powless won the Joe Martin Stage Race and was ninth at the Tour of California, winning the jersey for best young rider. Owen, the oldest of the trio at 22 this year, won the Liège-Bastogne-Liège U23 race. Nevertheless, Merckx told Cyclingnews it could be hard to top a 2016 season in which Axeon won a team-record 36 races, including eight national titles and three team classifications. All 16 riders took to the top step of the podium while contributing to a team-high 84 top-three placings overall.
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"That's hard to say after the season we had last year," Merckx said when asked if this is the strongest squad he's put together.
"Yes those guys stayed with us for one more year, but we lost Greg [Daniel to Trek-Segafredo], Ruben [Guerreiro to Trek-Segafredo], Teo [Geoghegan Hart to Team Sky], Colin [Joyce to Rally Cycling], Tyler [Williams to Cycling Academy]. All those guys are strong riders; they won races for themselves, but they also contributed to the other guys.
"It's kind of hard to compare both, but I feel pretty good about it," Merckx said. "I'm confident because we have some of those guys back from last year, but it's going to be a different approach for them. They'll have to confirm what they did last year over and above, and they'll have to have some leadership toward the new guys coming into the team, guiding them the way we race and try to make the team spirit the same as it was last year. I'm not saying that's only on the riders, it's one the staff and and us also, but that's the challenge and the work that we want to do.”
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