After eight years as one of the strongest teams in the United States, Hincapie Racing is calling it quits after a coronavirus pandemic prevented it from competing in even one race in 2020. Rich Hincapie, who has supported the team with his brother George at his apparel company, said the program will continue as a small junior team and hopes to be able to grow again in a year or two when the global situation stabilizes.

"We started as a feeder team for BMC and have continued throughout the last few years. 'I'm proud of what we've built and I think we can build on that again. It's just a matter of resources and focusing on what makes the most sense as a manager and as someone who is passionate about the sport and obviously still in the sport."

Team manager Thomas Craven planned an ambitious season of racing as Hincapie Leomo p/b BMC in Europe in 2020 and moved with the team to Spain in the spring, but the season was interrupted by a pandemic.

"We tried to make the leap this year of taking the team to Europe and actually rented an apartment. It was awful." That indecision, we'd already done it for a year and spent a lot of money doing nothing while races were being cancelled." Craven told Cycling News.

According to Rich Hincapie, the team had built a service course in Europe and had all the trucks, trailers, and team cars ready.

"We had a full program. We were doing all the European races, and as soon as everyone got there they locked down and got stuck. It took them three days to get back home. They went from there to Amsterdam and had to wait a couple of days to get to London.

Craven said indecision about what would happen in 2021 and how the race could proceed amid a pandemic in the United States contributed to the decision.

"It's hard to plan for the future in the US when there is no racing," Craven said, adding that it is difficult to find sponsors in the US, which did not host a single sanctioned event for pro riders this year.

"It's hard to promise sponsors and riders what you're actually going to do, because you're not going to be able to do it.

Until this week, they still planned to have a team, but lacked a major sponsor and did not want to lower the standards of the program.

"We had the funds, but not enough. For those of us who have been running the team for so long, taking such a big step backwards didn't make sense for the brand, for the riders, or for the standards we have built up over the years. For us to regroup the team in this way didn't make sense for the brand, for the riders, or for the standards we've built up over time.

The team began in 2012 as a development and feeder team for the BMC Racing World Tour team. It was backed by George Hincapie, who runs Hincapie Sportswear, his brother Rich, and BMC and WorldTour team manager Jim Ochowicz. alumni included Joey Roskoff (CCC Team), Toms Skuzins (Trek Segafredo) and Travis McCabe (Israel Startup Nation), Dion Smith (Mitchelton Scott), and Fabian Lienhard (Groupama-FDJ), among others.

After the first season, the team expanded from under 23 to older players, but continued to focus on developing younger players; from 2013 to 2015, Hincapie was the main sponsor and the team became Horovesco-Citadel.

The team included Toms Skuzins, who gave the team its first stage win at the Tour of California; Robin Carpenter, who won stages at the Tour of Alberta and the USA Pro Challenge; and McCabe, Ty Magner, and John Murphy. Personalities like these sprinters kept the team on its toes.

Always an aggressive team, Craven said the riders liked to attack and were not afraid to go toe-to-toe with the big teams. The most notable victory came at the 2015 Tour of California, when Latvian-born Skujins escaped with 55km remaining over Mount Hamilton to win a stage in San Jose that everyone expected to go to Peter Sagan. Skujins took the leader's jersey and held it for three days. [In 2016, Robin Carpenter (now with Rally Cycling) took the lead in the final day's time trial at the Tour of Alberta, and despite an onslaught from Bauke Mollema and Trek-Segafredo in second place, the team held on to the lead in the final stage.

"Instead of the defensive racing style of Sky and Ineos, we were trying to create chaos in every race, "What the hell are those guys doing?" Craven said. "Two or three guys would get into a breakaway group, or five guys would attack at once, just to confuse everybody.

"It wasn't about being on TV or being the most aggressive rider. It was about making an impact in every race, whether it was Joe Martin, a stage at the Tour of California, or Alberta. The only stage race in the U.S. that he didn't win was the Tour of Gila.

"We had a group of guys who would do anything for each other, and individual success led to team success. That's what happens when you get a good group of people together. Everyone wanted their teammates to win, so everyone had a chance. Yes, and a lot of that can be attributed to Oscar Clark. Oscar Clark didn't win many races, but he was an inspiration to everyone. He was literally the strongest and smartest guy in bike racing, and he helped not only me, but all the guys on the road."

According to Craven, because the team operates on a year-to-year basis each season, there are no contracted riders for 2021, and teams like Danny Van Hout's Wildlife Generation, especially Brendan Lim, who won the 2019 Tour de Beauce, have some They are trying to place riders.

"I have some good riders and I wanted to get them into the races they need to improve and put them on some of these teams. Brendan Lim has been on my team since he was a U23 rider and finally got serious about cycling after graduating from college in Furman. He won the Tour de Beauce and punched his ticket to the World Tour.

Hincapie Sportswear will continue to support riders, says Rich Hincapie. Because he and George have grown through the sport, with the help of others, starting with a few junior riders and looking to grow the program next year.

The pandemic made life difficult for all small businesses and hit everything the Hincapie brothers were concerned about. They own an events business, a boutique hotel called Hotel Domestique, and a clothing factory in Colombia, which was forced to shut down completely for months due to the country's COVID-19 regulations. Rich Hincapie has promised that the team, the sportswear company, and others involved will not be fired, furloughed, or take pay cuts.

"That was my mission from the beginning. We did not furlough a single person at the hotel. I did not reduce a single salary. We did not lay off a single person. I think a lot of companies didn't have to do that, but we still did," Rich Hincapie said.

"We do it because we love the sport and want to help it grow, and our employees are family. That was my big, big goal, and we succeeded. It was hard to keep everyone. For a couple of months the hotels and restaurants were in trouble, but overnight we went from zero to 100 miles per hour. Now it's packed, the restaurants are packed, and people just want to get away."

Hincapie says they still have to figure out how to get the equipment back on the service course in Spain so it can be used to support the junior teams.

"We have a lot of our stuff. So we have to send some people to get our stuff. We're going to move a lot of our stuff over to the junior program, so we have to think about that."

Craven is not done with the sport either. He is now concentrating on his hobby of model railroading, which he started when he raced for Schwinn and the 7-Eleven team in the 1990s, and hopes that eventually the pandemic will go away and racing and the team will thrive again.

"Like many teams and riders, we are affected by the number of races and racing is affected by everything that is happening in the world. I hope that over the next four years everything will start to change."