Owner eyes Canada as the new base for U.S. Team SmartStop

On Monday, hours before two team SmartStop riders took first and second in the U.S. national road championships, the Team owner Jamie Bennett was having a coffee on a patio in Toronto. He’s frequently in Ontario’s capital as part of his day job. His Canadian connections, however, go deeper than work. His mother was born in Donalda, Alta. He was born in London, Ont. On that patio, he was musing about making those connections deeper for his U.S. continental team. He’s seriously considering moving the Winston-Salem, N.C.-based outfit to Canada.

“I think it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “I feel there’s this great fit. It’s me coming back to my roots a little bit. We have three Canadians on the team right now, including the national champion.”

Before Bennett became a team owner, before he got involved in real estate (“I think I work in real estate, so I can afford a bike racing team,” he said), he raced bikes. His family moved to Florida when he was nine-years-old and he started competing at 15. At 16, his mother let him take the minivan for three months so he could chase races around the U.S. “I don’t know what she was thinking. I’d check in once a week,” he said. “Now, I couldn’t imagine the stress. I have a 13-year-old daughter. If she texts me 15-minutes late after getting dropped off at the movies, I start asking ‘Where are you? What’s going on?’”

During his racing days, he slept in cars and in tents at rest stops. Finding the next race was a word-of-mouth affair. Gaining the proper skills and knowledge was almost more difficult than tracking down competitions. At the time, there were few pro teams. Also, there were no age limits or requirements. More senior riders, Bennett remembers, guarded their positions and race knowledge from younger competitors. Eventually, despite racing at the Cat. 1 level, Bennett faced a plateau in his skill level and a few health issues. At 22, he quit, with regret.

After years away from bike racing, Bennett returned with partners Pat Raines and Erik Saunders. The trio started the Time Factory Development Team in 2006, one of the U.S.’s first under-23 development squads. In 2008, it gained UCI continental status. Criteriums, those close-circuit road races that are ubiquitous in North America, were the team’s focus. “We were good at the crits,” Bennett said. “We could rival UHC [UnitedHealthcare]. Every once in a while we’d be able to beat them, for a 10th of that team’s resources.”

In 2013, SmartStop took another step in its development: it began the transition to a stage-race oriented team. The move, for any team, isn’t easy. North American squads wanting to get to races such as the Tour of California, the Tour of Utah, even the Redlands Cycling Classic and the Joe Martin Stage Race, face a chicken-and-egg scenario. You need invites to stage races, but those invitations are difficult to get unless you can prove you can race stage races. To get in the stage-race game, Bennett worked with the Tour of Alberta and Medalist Sports, the company that manages races such as Alberta, California and Utah, on a novel plan. To ensure there would be one Albertan in the province’s inaugural tour, Bennett said he’d take on the highest-placed under-23 Alberta rider from the Banff National Park Bike Fest. In 2013, that rider was Kris Dahl. The Calgary native got a stagiaire contract with SmartStop.

The program was a success for both Dahl and SmartStop. The stagiaire became a full member of the team in 2014. With the Tour of Alberta invite, Bennett’s squad began to change. Mid-season he hired Flavio De Luna (ex-SpiderTech), Travis McCabe and Eric Marcotte to bolster his team for the new six-day stage race. Of course, invites to other stage races followed. This year the team has raced at Redlands, Joe Martin and Tour of the Gila. The Tour de Beauce, Utah, the USA Pro Challenge and Alberta are strong possibilities this year. Bennett has even had to turn down invites to European races, such as Castilla y León, Volta a Portugal, Paris-Arras and World Ports Classic. With a bit of regret, Bennett had to turn down those races for one reason: money. “If there are invites we can’t take, it’s a financial problem. We can’t take advantage of those opportunities. Every obstacle we have right now is financial stability related.”

The growth of SmartStop has hit a plateau. Bennett’s riders are doing very well this year. There’s Marcotte’s win at the U.S. nationals. McCabe’s win at the Winston-Salem Classic. McCabe is also leading the USA Cycling National Racing Calendar standings. The team is second overall in the UCI Americas competition. Canadian Rob Britton was third overall at Gila. The team has the talent. It has the race invites. To develop, it now needs to increase its financial base, which has Bennett looking at Toronto. “The reality is I feel I can find more corporate partners in Toronto than I can fishing in the pond that I was in,” Bennett said. “Toronto’s a great place to grow. We’re at the point where we need a six- and seven-figure cheques to pull off the program, just to be able to make it grow,” he said.

While Bennett his hoping Canada can help him, he feels he can repay his native country. He sees lots of cycling talent here, but not enough racing opportunities. “There’s a void. I’m a real-estate developer, so I look for opportunities. I see an opportunity and a need in Canada. This team is costing me money. I’m not making money. I just love the sport. But if I can do something better and I can do it for Canada and get a nation to rally behind something, I’d be more excited about that than anything.”

Bennett has his sights on a UCI pro continental team, much like the the former SpiderTech squad that folded in 2012. Bennett has a lot of respect for Steve Bauer’s project, but he envisions a slightly less ambitious program, something less WorldTour-oriented. He sees the French team Cofidis or Spain’s Caja Rural as models. Both teams are pro continental, but get invites to significant races. “You can have a very sustainable program in Canada for 20 years, if you can get $3 or $4 million a year. It could be the best program in North America. I’ve studied all the programs out there and the way they use their resources. You could have a pro continental program and guaranteed invites to every major race in the world with that. Something like that would be really healthy for Canada. It needs to be a holding place for great athletes. It needs to be competitive on the world stage. Canada has world-class events, but it doesn’t have a world class team. I think somebody’s got to fill that gap.”