Optum p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies tops UCI America’s Tour standings, helped by a little Canadian power

The wind-down of the 2015 season has brought Optum p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies even more prestigious recognition. In UCI America’s Tour standings, the team caps off another year with top rankings — which, with its accounting for UCI competitions in the entire western hemisphere, essentially establishes Optum as the best team either North or South America.

It’s an incredible way to finish the season, team officials say.

“Finishing our season as the number one team in the Western Hemisphere is pretty cool, and it validates our efforts this year,” said Optum’s performance director Jonas Carney. Reflecting on the year, Carney called 2015 the team’s best season yet, one that brought the squad a glowing, unbeatable string of victories. Since the season’s earliest races in Portugal, back in February, the team demonstrated stand-out consistency even as the summer’s more intense stage races began, he said. Seeing 2015 take the team where it has, no doubt, is a meter of Optum’s successes that leaves little room for doubt.

“We don’t have many ways to measure the season as a whole against our rivals,” Carney continued, “but the UCI America’s Tour includes all of the most important races in North America, so it’s a pretty good gauge. We didn’t chase points in South America, Central America or the Caribbean, and every one of our points came from racing in the U.S. and Canada.”

“It indicates that this was our best season yet.”

Achieving such great heights in the year’s competition, of course, is something the team significantly credits to Canada’s Mike Woods. America’s Tour rankings saw Woods tally 179 UCI points, taking third overall in individual standings. The Amgen Tour of California, the USA Pro Challenge, the Tour of Alberta, and the Tour of Utah, where Woods traversed many grueling mountain stages in possession of the yellow leader’s jersey, each saw the tough Canuck climber add critical wins to those numbers. Utah’s dizzying altitudes, a high point of the season in more ways than one, put that indefatigable power put on display.

The team, meanwhile, is what made Woods’s season what it was, the 28-year-old Canadian rider says. “In cycling,” Woods explained, “it is one thing to be putting out good numbers in training, and another thing to actually translate those numbers to results. Having Jonas, Eric Wohlberg, the staff and my teammates’ support and advice throughout the season helped me make the transition from a strong rider to a relatively savvy bike racer.”

Among those teammates, who also helped get Optum to its enviable season-ending position, Canada, of course, is strongly represented there, too. Beyond Woods’s powerful role as one of the squad’s leading climbers, compatriots Ryan Anderson and Guillaume Boivin stand out as all-rounders, with the numbers to show for it. In America’s Tour individual rankings, Boivin finishes 13th, with 102 points. Anderson — despite being injured for much of the season — also racked up 72 UCI points.

Canada’s Silber also finished the season in the upper echelons of America’s Tour success, just barely squeaking into the Tour’s breakdown of the top ten competing teams.