2011 Veranda's Willems–Accent season

2011 roster

In line with the squad's promotion to the second-tier of UCI-registered racing, were allowed to utilise more riders on their roster as a UCI Professional Continental team. As a UCI Continental team, the team was only allowed to have a maximum of sixteen riders on their roster at any one time, while at Professional Continental level, rosters could range from sixteen to twenty-five riders. Over the course of the season, the team had twenty full-time riders on their books – up from sixteen riders in 2010, with twelve riders joining the team and eight riders leaving – while rider Dries Hollanders and Kevin Van Den Noortgate, a rider from amateur team EFC-Quick Step, joined the team in the second half of the season, on short-term contracts, serving as trainee riders or stagiaires. As such, many of the riders drafted in by the squad were experienced in the higher levels of the sport, having competed at ProTour and Professional Continental level; only two of the twelve new signings were aged 23 or under.

Riders in

Following the discontinuation of at the end of the 2010 season, Belgian rider Wim De Vocht dropped down from the ProTour to join the team. Two riders also joined from another ProTour team; Staf Scheirlinckx, a domestique and former top-ten finisher at Paris–Roubaix in 2006, and Jurgen Van Goolen both joined from ; Van Goolen had previously signed for the Pegasus Sports project, prior to folding before the 2011 season even started. Steven Caethoven and Arnoud Van Groen left their respective Professional Continental teams and to join , Under-23 riders Jaco Venter and Thomas Vernaeckt both competed at Continental level in 2010 for and Sunweb-Revor respectively, but joined in the hopes of progressing eventually to the World Tour. Also joining the team were Jempy Drucker, Rob Goris, David Kemp, Bram Schmitz and Evert Verbist.

Riders out

Andy Cappelle was the team's most notable departure for the 2011 season; after winning the Polynormande race and a stage at the Rhône-Alpes Isère Tour, Cappelle left the team to join World Tour squad on a twelve-month contract. Fabio Polazzi, Robin Stenuit and Jonas Vangenechten all joined for the 2011 season, with Cédric Collaers (Lotto-Bodysol), Sven Renders (Team Worldofbike.gr) and Hendrik Van Den Bossche (Donckers Koffie-Jelly Belly) all acquiring contracts for the 2011 season. Of the eight riders to leave the team prior to the 2011 season, only Julien Paquet failed to find a team.

Roster details

For each of the riders listed below, their ages are listed as of January 1, 2011.

;Riders who joined the team for the 2011 season

;Riders who left the team during or after the 2010 season

One-day races

Spring classics

The team had very little success in the single-day races in the early part of the year, and it was not until February before the team achieved a top ten placing in a race. At the Beverbeek Classic in Belgium, Verbist and Dries Hollanders – who would join Veranda's Willems Accent later in the year as a stagiaire – attacked off the front of the field and in the process, set up a two-man sprint for the victory in Hamont-Achel. Verbist gapped Hollanders by a second to win the race for the second time, after previously winning the race in 2006 with the team. In March, van Dijk took two second-place finishes – both coming in mass sprints – at Omloop van het Waasland behind 's Aidis Kruopis, and the Nokere Koerse behind Gert Steegmans of .

Later in March, Van Groen finished ninth in the Classic Loire Atlantique, and Vanlandschoot took a sixth-place finish the next day in the Cholet-Pays de Loire race. In April, during one of the team's wildcard entries to a World Tour race, Scheirlinckx finished in eighth place in the Tour of Flanders, having bridged up to the lead group prior to the final climb of the race, the cobbled Bosberg hill, 10 km from the finish in Meerbeke. Van Dijk finished fourth in the Scheldeprijs three days later, having avoided a crash in the finishing straight which eliminated several riders from contention for the top placings. This result was again followed the next day by a top ten finish by Vanlandschoot, as in the Grand Prix Pino Cerami, Vanlandschoot finished in ninth place. May and June brought the team two more top ten finishes each month; Verbist finished tenth in the Circuit de Wallonie, and eighth in the Gullegem Koerse national event in Belgium, while in June, van Dijk finished fifth in the Tour de Rijke, and Van Groen finished tenth in another national event, the Ruddervoorde Koerse.

The team also sent squads to the Grand Prix d'Ouverture La Marseillaise, Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Kuurne–Brussels–Kuurne, Le Samyn, De Vlaamse Pijl, the Handzame Classic, Dwars door Vlaanderen, E3 Prijs Vlaanderen – Harelbeke, Gent–Wevelgem, Hel van het Mergelland, Brabantse Pijl, the Grand Prix de Denain, the Tour du Finistère, the Amstel Gold Race, the Tro-Bro Léon, La Flèche Wallonne, Liège–Bastogne–Liège, the Eschborn-Frankfurt City Loop, Halle–Ingooigem, and the Internationale Wielertrofee Jong Maar Moedig, but placed outside of the top 10 in all of these races.

Fall races

The second half of the 2011 season for Veranda's Willems-Accent was more impressive than the first half of the year, taking top ten placings in 18 out of 22 single-day races held between July and October. It began with a victory, with Habeaux taking his first professional win in Dwars door het Hageland, held in Aarschot, Belgium. Verbist finished sixth in the Grand Prix José Dubois, before Habeaux took another top ten finish in Antwerpse Havenpijl in August. Later in August, van Dijk finished third in the Dutch Food Valley Classic, Verbist finished tenth in the Châteauroux Classic, Drucker finished sixth in the Grote Prijs Stad Zottegem, with Van Goolen adding a fourth top ten within the space of a week, with third in the Druivenkoers Overijse event.

Van Dijk then reeled off a run of five consecutive races in which he finished as the team's best rider. The run began towards the end of August with a tenth-place finish in the Schaal Sels-Merksem event, which was followed by a trio of fourth places in early-September at the Grote Prijs Jef Scherens, the Memorial Rik Van Steenbergen, and Paris–Brussels, before a third place the day after, in the Grand Prix de Fourmies. Later in the month, van Dijk finished eighth in the Kampioenschap van Vlaanderen, and second behind 's Guillaume Van Keirsbulck in Omloop van het Houtland. October brought the team three final top ten placings; Verbist finished eighth in the Tour de Vendée, Vernaeckt took his best result of the season with ninth place in Binche–Tournai–Binche, and van Dijk concluded his season with fifth place in the final Belgian race of the season, the Nationale Sluitingsprijs.

The team also sent squads to the Polynormande, the Grand Prix de Wallonie, the Grand Prix d'Isbergues, Paris–Bourges, and Paris–Tours, but placed outside of the top 10 in all of these races.

Stage races

Compared to the team's single-day form, Veranda's Willems-Accent were not so prominent during the stage races. Schmitz took a minor classification win at the Étoile de Bessèges, winning the mountains classification comfortably, scoring more than double the points of his closest rival Yuri Trofimov of . The team's first stage win did not come until June, when Caethoven won the final stage of the Delta Tour Zeeland into Terneuzen. Later in the month, the team took two more stage wins at the Route du Sud, with van Dijk winning the opening stage into Samatan, and Van Goolen won the third stage into Bagnères-de-Luchon, having soloed to victory from an earlier twelve-man breakaway, eventually winning the stage by 96 seconds. Van Dijk also took out the points classification for the team, which was the team's final classification win of the year. Later in the season, Degand took third place in the two-day Paris–Corrèze race.

The team also sent squads to the Tour du Haut Var, the Tour of South Africa, Driedaagse van West-Vlaanderen, the Three Days of De Panne, the Circuit de la Sarthe, the Presidential Tour of Turkey, the Four Days of Dunkirk, the Tour de Picardie, the Tour of Belgium, the Tour de Luxembourg, the Tour de Wallonie, the Eneco Tour, the Tour du Limousin, and the Tour de Wallonie-Picarde, but did not achieve a stage win, classification win, or podium finish in any of them.

Grand Tours

As the squad was a UCI Professional Continental team for the first time in 2011, they were in a position to compete in one of the three Grand Tours. As such, all eighteen UCI ProTeams were invited automatically to each of the races, meaning that had to receive an invitation from each respective race organiser, in order to compete. However, the squad was not selected to ride any of the three Grand Tours; for the Giro d'Italia, four of the five wildcards were largely Italian teams, with the team being the only exception. Four wildcards were on offer for the Tour de France, and all were received by French-based teams – , , and – and at the Vuelta a España, home teams and were invited along with and Dutch team .

Season victories

At the end of the 2010–2011 UCI Europe Tour season, was ranked in fourteenth place in the final Europe Tour standings, with a total of 879 points contributed by the team's best eight riders in the concurrent individual rankings. Van Dijk was the team's best placed rider on the individual rankings, finishing in sixth place with 494 of the team's points; missing out on a top-five ranking by 24 points. Outside of the team's continental home tour, the squad was also ranked in the 2010–2011 UCI Africa Tour standings; with 14 points contributed by Degand, Venter and Habeaux at the Tour of South Africa, the team ranked in sixteenth place out of 22 points-scoring teams. The team also scored 40 points on the 2010–2011 UCI Asia Tour, but this was due to the acquisition of results as did not compete in Asia as a team during the season; David Kemp joined for the 2011 season, having won the Tour of Taihu in October 2010 for Fly V Australia.

Although the team was able to compete in UCI World Tour races during the season, no points were awarded to the team following a new rule introduced by the Union Cycliste Internationale, clarifying that only UCI ProTeams were eligible to score World Tour points.

Away from competition

Sponsorship

The team attracted a co-sponsor for the 2011 season, having been known as during the 2010 season. When the list of 2011 UCI Professional Continental Teams was announced in December 2010, the team name was listed as . This was due to the involvement of Accent Jobs for people, a Belgian recruitment company, focusing on the job market in their native country as well as the pan-European market. They joined Veranda's Willems, a Belgian manufacturer of conservatories and windows, as main sponsors of the team. Other team partners included carbonated soft drinks company Coca-Cola, bicycle components company Miche, sports equipment manufacturer Oakley, electronic sports equipment manufacturer Sigma Sport, and many more.

Following the 2011 season, it was announced that Accent Jobs for People would become "the full owner/sponsor of their Pro Continental cycling team", and in effect, change the order in which the names appeared in the team's documentation; becoming for 2012. The team had hoped to acquire another main sponsor in order to provide budget for any further signings that the team may have wished to have carried out, but this did not materialise; leaving the team shy of the 20 riders they wished to have. As well as a change in the background running of the team, with Wim Vanhaelemeesch replacing Bill Olivier as team manager, the team also introduced a new-look kit for the 2012 season. Replacing the white-and-black kit that the team had adopted since its formation, a predominately orange kit with areas of black around the shoulders was introduced ahead of their 2012 season-opening race.

Postseason

Six riders left the team at the conclusion of the 2011 season. Failing to take a top ten finish at any race in the season, Dieter Cappelle was not retained after two seasons with the team. Sven Van Den Houte, who had been with the team since 2009, left the squad to join the Colba-Superano Ham team, after failing to register a top-50 finish in any race he contested in 2011. The other four riders left the squad after only twelve months with the outfit; Jaco Venter left to join , while Thomas Vernaeckt left to join the new Belgian-Algerian squad formed for the start of the 2012 season, Geofco Ville d'Alger. David Kemp failed to garner a contract for the 2012 season, while Bram Schmitz retired from competitive racing at the age of 34; he competed as a professional between 1999 and 2011, for the , Batavus-Bankgiroloterij, and teams, as well as his season with .

Four riders joined the team ahead of the 2012 season. Following his season at , Andy Cappelle rejoined the team after a winless season at , although he did finish runner-up to 's Anthony Charteau in January's La Tropicale Amissa Bongo. After two seasons with the team, Oleg Chuzhda joined the squad, while Kevyn Ista left after two seasons, with a best result of second place at the 2011 Le Samyn. The final arrival at the team for 2012 was ex- rider and three-time Belgian national time trial champion Leif Hoste. Hoste was signed to boost the team's abilities in the Classic races, having been a three-time runner-up in the Tour of Flanders Monument race. This left the team's roster at 18 riders for the 2012 season.

Footnotes

References

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