With a former winner of Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne and last year's Tour of Flanders runner-up on their roster for the Opening Weekend, Trek-Segafredo came into the Classics with calibre and ambition. It could hardly have got off to a worse start, however, with a hugely disappointing showing last weekend.
Directeur sportif Steven de Jongh described the result as a "smack in the face" and admitted after Omloop that he was worried for the remainder of their campaign, saying his riders had a lot of work to do before they returned to the cobbles later this month.
The riders were moved to apologise to the team after the best they could manage at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad was 40th with Jasper Stuyven and. While things did improve for the team the following day at Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, with 14th for Edward Theuns, it was well below what they would have hoped for. Stuyven missed Kuurne after falling ill, and the team will hope that this was the reason for his below-par performance the day before.
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The failure to fire adds a bit more pressure to a team that is in a crucial stage of development. Mercifully, the team didn't unleash their entire Classics arsenal at Opening Weekend, with former Paris-Roubaix winner John Degenkolb not due to make his cobbles debut until the E3 BinckBank Classic at the end of March.
This year will be the team's third Classics campaign since losing their cobbles figurehead Fabian Cancellara to retirement. Indeed, the team have not won a major cobbled Classic since Cancellara's departure. Trek-Segafredo team manager Luca Guercilena says that it was always going to be hard to pick up where they left off.
"We know that Fabian was a leader of this team for many years, so obviously when you have a leader going away, you need to build up," Guercilena told Cyclingnews. "We started with some young riders and added John. So I think that it wasn't that difficult in respect of creating a group, but it was difficult because this team was set up on the personality of Fabian. When he left, we needed time to build up a different structure in the Classics group.
Stuyven stepping up
Degenkolb back on track
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/life-after-cancellara-trek-segafredos-struggle-for-classics-success
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