Project Echelon's Season Gets Underway
Can the UCI Continental Squad Improve on a Stellar 2024
An interesting aspect about covering UCI racing is the myriad data stored by the UCI. Fans of the show know that we love data. The more esoteric the better, so when we started our 2025 coverage of the Wisconsin-based UCI Continental squad, Project Echelon, we went dove into the numbers. In 2024, the team’s third year with a license, the squad ranked 88th in the world. Keep in mind, that includes Pro Continental and World Tour teams in addition to the third division Continental level.
For comparison, Echelon finished the season with 345 UCI points, whereas the top American UCI licensed team, Lidl-Trek, was 4th with 17,898 points. Echelon, which has the UCI abbreviation PEC, accomplished this feat by fielding a team of almost exclusively American talent, with only Laurent Gervais (Quebec, Canada) and Ethan Craine (New Zealand by way of Quebec, Canada) possessing passports from other countries. The team was led in 2024 by Tyler Stites, scoring 186 points, with Scott McGill second on the squad with 109 points. Fifty of McGill’s points came from his incredible 4th place finish at U.S. Road Nationals. McGill also had two UCI stage wins, one at the Tour of the Gila and another at the Rhodes Tour in Greece. A total of nine riders from Echelon scored UCI points last year.
With his impressive UCI points haul, Stites secured a multi-year contract with UCI Pro Caja Rural, leaving the team without its 2024 leader. The 2025 European season just opened this week at Challenge Mallorca, and we wanted to dive deep into what 2025 will look like for the squad and if they can improve on what they accomplished in the prior 12 months.
Echelon team owner Eric Hill indicated that 2025 is about refining and building on the successes of the past couple of years. The team’s focus has been on adding to its UCI race calendar while keeping expenses at a sustainable level. In 2023, the team competed in the Challenge Mallorca, an early-season set of UCI one-day races around the Spanish island, but did not return to Europe for another block of racing until the summer. In 2024, they added 7 UCI Europe Tour races to their calendar, including the Tour of Norway, a 2.Pro stage race, and the Tour of Britain, a 2.1 event. This year, they intend to increase their impact in these races by landing riders further up the results sheet.
The past two years have provided the organization with critical institutional experience. As Gord Fraser, Canadian cycling legend and director sportiff for the squad, said when asked about the value of experience, “not only just knowing the courses (in North America and Europe) and the physical demands but knowing the competition, the other teams and also understanding the demands off the bike, the type of travel, those kind of obscure demands that we don't often think about. They're already prepared for that mentally. So yeah, I think there are many things pointing in the direction of progression for us.”
Let’s look at 2025 and Project Echelon’s goals. U.S. Road Nationals stands out among the top targets. Last year, the team went 1-2-3 in the rainy nighttime criterium but failed to make the podium in the road race. According to Hill, that was a big miss, especially after Stites had finished third and second in the prior two editions of the race, and with the largest squad in the peloton in Charleston. As we said earlier, McGill did finish fourth, but there is no place in the podium picture for that position. That is a shame because out of the top five riders in that race, McGill was by far the most aggressive, racing off the front for almost the entire event. In the end, McGill was only beaten by 3 World Tour pros.
Another race the team is focused on is Tour de Beauce, a 2.2. The Tour de Beauce is in Quebec, making it a home race for Echelon’s bike sponsor, Argon 18. Beauce is a diabolical stage race to take on for GC hopefuls. Hill points to the complexity of the event, which includes a challenging criterium, the Lac Megantic stage with its infamous climb, and the final stage—the 122 km long Saint-Georges circuit race, which will push any racer to his limits. Last year, Stites finished second on GC and missed the top step by 44 seconds. However, the next best rider for Echelon finished 40th, a full 13 minutes down on the winner. Fortunately, new Echelon recruit Kieran Haug, a name we are about to get familiar with, finished 8th, within 90 seconds of the leader, for his 2024 squad, CS Velo.
Hill also wants to take the fight directly to the World Tour teams at all their events. He pointed to McGill’s national performance as proof “that on any given day, it might be your day.” That is why Echelon’s strategy in 2025 is to get up the road early and often. The squad is known for attacking riders. They already won the sprint and KOM trophies this year at the Trofeo Ses Salinas, a 1.1, with Ethan Craine and Colby Lange, respectively.
Losing Stites is obviously a big hit for the squad. All of American cycling knew that he belonged at the Pro level, or higher. However, Echelon has backfilled that loss with some serious talent. The aforementioned Haug is at the top of the list for GC hopefuls. Echelon already features a phenomenal climber in Ricky Arnopol, whose powers as a top lieutenant were pivotal for Stites’ success at races like Gila and Redlands. Arnopol can now lend those watts to Haug, who has demonstrated a capacity to find the target in hard races, finishing 3rd in the youth category at the Tour of the Gila, a 2.2, and 4th in the same GC competition at Beauce. According to Hill, Haug comes from a non-traditional cycling background, so we are only beginning to see his potential.
Another new rider is Cole Davis, who is hardly a newcomer to the pages of The Chronicle. The former Ribble Rebellion rider was the only one to beat Echelon last year on any stage of Redlands where he won at Onyx. Davis also brings a European pedigree, having raced extensively as a U23 with Axeon. With that experience, he should hopefully be a strong positive influence on two other riders, Jonas Walton and Troy Fields, who were recently signed. Both Walton and Fields can be classified as diesel engines set to provide much-needed power in controlling and managing races alongside someone like Sam Boardman. Fields finished 2nd in the U.S. U23 national time trial, and Walton won the Canadian U23 TT and represented Team Canada in World Tour events. Walton, in particular, proved that he can compete for GC himself if called upon when he took 4th in the GC and the White Jersey at Gila in 2024.
These riders join a veteran squad familiar with success. When asked about key returning riders Hill gave us a slightly cheeky retort of “you tell me.” Then he pointed to a team full of key riders. He went on to point out that “(a)ny one of these guys can and should expect to win on any given day. The team's strength is our riders and the strength of our riders is how they function as a team.” However, Hill was quick also to remind us that setting high expectations can lead to frustrations when things do not work out as planned. This is why his “biggest job is to maintain a positive culture, keep everyone believing and to remind them that everything is earned and nothing is given.”
Any discussion about returning riders for 2025 must start with three individuals— Brendan Rhim, Laurent Gervais, and Sam Boardman. When it comes to Boardman, he operated as the glue that held this squad together last year. He’s one of the oldest riders on the squad, and comes from a history of success with other programs. When you look at the results for the team from 2024, as Boardman went, so did the team. When he was able to manage and control the race, the team succeeded.
Rhim became the team’s go-to guy behind Stites last year. His GC win at Tucson Bicycle Classic set the stage for a solid year to follow, including solo wins at Redlands and Clarendon. Gervais was the ultimate dark horse for the squad. He rode strong in Norway but came into his own at Beauce. The only thing that separated him from a podium finish there was some very bad luck in a late race crash that regrettably sent him to the hospital.
Hill acknowledged that building success year-over-year is no easy task. “When you look across sports, very few teams can successfully do it.” However, 3 years of experience at the professional level of the sport has taught the organization a few things. “Some little things we are doing this year to help keep the momentum include more consistency with rosters and who is racing together, staff at those races, etc. We also have a team house in Malaga, Spain, to start the season where the team can really build a band of brothers, train together, and remove some stressors like travel.”
That said, a measure of success in this sport is simple objective results. Where you finish on the results sheet matters. With a full calendar this year, Echelon will have many opportunities to prove it. We will follow them as they move through it.
Full Rosters for 2025:
Ricky Arnopol, USA
Stephen Bassett, USA
Sam Boardman, USA
Cade Bickmore, USA
Caleb Classen, USA
Ethan Craine, New Zealand
Cole Davis, USA
Troy Fields, USA
Larent Gervais, Canada
Kieran Haug, USA
Colby Lange, USA
Scott McGill, USA
Brendan Rhim, USA
Hugo Scala Jr., USA
Jonas Walton, Canada
Sam Boardman wrote some really entertaining pieces for Escape last season. Hope there is more to come from him!
Colby Lange made a solid entry in Trofeo Ses Salines. Promising!