Canadians rocking in Europe

Congrats to François Parisien for winning the fifth stage of the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya in Spain Friday! It was a sprint victory over a former Tour de France stage winner. And so it should be as Frank is on Argos-Shimano, a UCI ProTeam. And Frank isn’t the only one doing well.

Christian Meier is also at Catalunya riding with Orica-GreenEdge. He was in the stage-long breakaway on Stage 1 and took the sprint leaders jersey. Christian is still holding it, riding resplendent in the white jersey that designates the sprint leader.

For those who don’t know, the ProTeams are the biggest teams in the world and there are several Canadians on them. There is the obvious Ryder Hesjedal at Garmin-Sharp, but also Svein Tuft and Christian Meier at Orica-GreenEdge; Hugo Houle at AG2R La Mondiale and Dominique Rollin at FDJ in France; and Guillaume Boivin at Cannondale Pro Cycling in Italy.

Then there are a bunch of other guys racing in Europe on solid teams: Davide Veilleux at Europcar; Will Routley at Accent Jobs-Wanty; and David Boily at Amore & Vita. Rob Britton has made the trip to Britain to race with Team Raleigh, a team that races regularly on the continent. Internationally, Ryan Roth, Zach Bell and Ryan Anderson are competing with Champions Systems.

Really there is just such a great depth of talent coming out of Canada at the moment. Last week, David Boily was 17th in his season-opening race, the GP Nobili. And there were two Canadians in Milan-San Remo: Houle and Veilleux, one of the biggest races in the world. Never has there been such a depth of talent in Canadian cycling racing at the highest levels of the sport.

If you look at who is out there, you’ll notice that many have passed through the Jet Fuel Coffee, Symmetrics or SpiderTech programs. These were the top Canadian programs of the past 15 years, each one stepping up to offer a more developed program than the previous. The riders coming out of these years really highlight the value of exposing younger riders to the top levels of the sport when they are still adapting.

So what do you say Canada? Who is going to step up and support the development of our athletes, both male and female? There is a surge of talent coming up through the ranks and we need to place them in a quality development program to take advantage of this generational opportunity. Let’s not let all the hard work that was done at Jet Fuel, Symmetrics and SpiderTech to go waste.