Thijs Benoot has signed a two-year contract extension with Sunweb, the team announced Monday.

Benoot joined Sunweb this season from Lotto Soudal, where he rode strongly in the Paris-Nice race in March, just before the sport closed due to the coronavirus epidemic, taking a stage win and second place overall behind Bora-Hansgrohe's Max Schachmann.

Benoot then competed in Strade Bianche, Milan-San Remo, and the Criterium du Dauphiné when the event resumed, and is now part of the Tour de France's eight-man team.

"No one is going for the overall ranking," Benoot said in July when Sunweb announced his Tour squad. We are aiming for stage wins with some of the riders."

"Cies-Bol will be aiming for the flat stages and has the option of joining a breakaway group on the mountain stages. [But he has a good chance to win his first Grand Tour stage victory, avenging his second place behind Mitchelton-Scott's Daryl Impey on stage 9 of last year's Tour.

"Everything I had hoped for before joining the team last year has come true. I'm happy with how things went at the start of the season and how things are still going."

"I'm really looking forward to doing more long-term projects with the team and that's why I renewed my contract," he explained.

"It's also nice to feel that the team trusts me and I'm looking forward to doing more great races and getting better results together."

Sunweb head coach Rudy Kemna added. "Teej is in his first year with the team. Since he is such a good fit, we wanted to extend his contract for another year to give him more time to continue working with us in this way.

"His good results early in the season, with a stage win in Paris-Nice and second place in GC, show that we have integrated well so far. He is a really talented rider and we see his strength as being part of our strong classics block and getting results in the Flanders and Walloon classics.

"In addition to that, we want to develop Tigier and work with our team of experts on his climbing and time trial abilities to see where his limits are as a GC rider in the future," said Chemna.

In addition, there have been a number of changes that will give Sunweb a very different look in 2021: in early August, the team confirmed the addition of Romain Bardet from AG2R La Mondiale for the upcoming season, and in recent days, Michael Matthews left the team and next year Mitchelton Scott to rejoin the team.