British pro left feeling 'confused' after being dropped by WorldTour team

Harrison Wood says he was left feeling "confused" after leaving Cofidis and finding himself on the market for a new team.

The 24-year-old British professional, who was previously supported by The Rayner Foundation, recently completed a move to the Portugal-based UCI Continental team Sabgal-Anicolor after spending three years with Cofidis, a French WorldTour outfit. During that time he rode and completed the Giro d’Italia, Tour de Suisse and several of the biggest one-day races on the calendar.

"I have so much respect and a lot of love for the people at Cofidis with the team atmosphere and riders that we had," Wood told Cycling Weekly recently. "It was great for them to put me in some of these really big races but then I sort of think it almost backfired putting me in them as it meant I couldn’t ever do the slightly smaller races to try and make results and really show myself.

"It’s brilliant getting to do races like the Volta a Catalunya and the Giro but it almost backfired as it meant I couldn’t do smaller races and maybe realistically go for a top ten or things like that."

"That’s definitely one thing I’ve been struggling to understand with Cofidis," he added. "I ended up doing all these big races so the team must have had a lot of confidence to put me in these from the start and been happy with how I was going. So I guess that’s what I don’t understand as if they’d wanted me to do results then I should maybe have been doing the slightly smaller races. It left me a bit confused at the end."

Wood continued: "In the Giro I was sort of in and around it on a few occasions on some of the harder stages right up until the final climbs. I was able to be there to help guys like Simon Geschke in the GC and other things so I was really happy with that.

"Then in the Tour de Suisse it was similar, and I was only getting dropped with six or seven kilometres to go so it was clear that I’d made some good progress. So I think I’m a bit disappointed to not really have another chance as I felt like next year could be another big stepping stone and a bit of a breakthrough potentially."

Despite his initial disappointment at being let go, Wood explained that he is determined to use his frustration to fuel his performances going into a fresh campaign with his new team. Another French WorldTour team were briefly interested in his signature before he got a ride elsewhere, he also said.

His new team, Sabgal–Anicolor, is at Continental-level but Wood says that he can already see they will punch well above their weight.

He said: "I had the opportunity from Sabgal–Anicolor and thought actually I could benefit from being somewhere else where the team might help me in races a lot and I can repay the favour at other points and I can then get some results with the aim of moving back to the WorldTour at another point.

"If I'm honest the team we have got isn’t a Continental team roster, it's more like a Pro Continental squad. It’s the equipment that helps with that too, we’ve got Factor bikes, lightweight Princeton wheels, good kit, altitude training camps. So the team is like a higher level setup just with a Continental licence."

He will be joined at Sabgal by fellow Brit Mason Hollyman, who has signed from Israel-Premier Tech. It is also not the end of WorldTour dreams, with Julius Johansen joining UAE Team Emirates from the Portuguese team this winter.