After the success of Toms Skujins at the Tour of California, the media’s attention has been drawn to small US Continental team Hincapie Racing, who the Latvian rides for.

"I'd like to be able to move up maybe in the next two years or so, you know, put that goal out there," sports director Thomas Craven told Cyclingnews after the stage 6 time trial in Santa Clarita on Saturday. "Be able to go Pro Continental and establish ourselves in Europe with a European base and see where we go from there."

The team has been slowly building its reputation in the USA, after Joey Rosskopf shone in the Tour of Utah last year before moving to BMC, then Robin Carpenter took out a stage in the USA Pro Challenge. They then won the National Team Time Trial Championships before Skujins held the Yellow Jersey for a few days in California following a solo win on stage three.

"To go from our level to the Pro Continental level is a couple of million dollars more -- with the bigger staff, bigger riders the whereabouts stuff, all that," he said. "That's the only way we would do it. We won't do it poorly. We're not going to try and stretch ourselves or do anything that we can't do. There's no way we would jump into it without having that behind us first."

The team founded by George and Rich Hincapie is talking with people to see if they can make the step up to Europe in the near future.

"The powers that be with Rich and George and the connections that they have, they're talking to people right now that could make that happen, so we'll see," Craven said.

Craven didn’t deny just how big Skujins stage win was for the whole team as a whole, as well as for the talented Latvian individually.

"It put a good light on our team and the way we ride. It shows the European guys that this isn't a race where they can come and have a holiday or anything like that. We're going to go as hard as they go all the time as well."