When analysing the 2017 season, Jim Ochowicz and his BMC management team can look back at a relatively successful campaign. Greg Van Avermaet became a legitimate Classics star with a hugely impressive spring; Richie Porte lit up a number of early season stage races; Dylan Teuns enjoyed breakthrough second half of the year, and Grand Tour stages were won in both the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a España.
The US-registered team may have come up short in the Grand Tour GC department; missed out on the WorldTour team rankings and slipped to silver at the Worlds TTT but Ochowicz believes that the team can step up in 2018, and deliver further success.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for Ochowicz during the winter is over how he deals with the team's Grand Tour hopes.
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Richie Porte, Tejay van Garderen and Rohan Dennis all missed out on their ambitions to contend for podium spots, although van Garderen did at least rescue his season, and perhaps his career, with a stage at the Giro and 10th overall at the Vuelta.
While Porte will have another shot at Tour de France glory in 2018, the roles of Dennis and van Garderen remain uncertain. Dennis has proven his undoubted talent as a bike rider during his time at the team but he has only made it to the finish of two Grand Tours, and only once finished inside the top 90, when he took 81st at the 2014 Vuelta. Van Garderen remains somewhat of a stage racing enigma – always liable to crack but still with two top-fives at the Tour on his palmares.
"Our intention is that Tejay steps up," Ochowicz told Cyclingnews from his European office in Belgium.
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