Team Garmin- whats next?
 

Top 5 GC- certainly Garmin is happy with their sponsorship decision this year. Do they sign a true GC contender next year? A sprinter to take home at least one stage win? Or will CVV have to be the man? What an awesome tour debut for the team!

He lost 2 1/2 minutes due to a crash and finished top 5 3:05 down, how is he not a "true" GC contender? Who do you propose they hire? Denny? Cadel? Shleck? um he would have beat them all minus the crash. Maybe the should go get Levi or Contador? I'm pretty sure they dont have contracts. :rolleyes:

+1

Back that man and hope for a team time trial.

Stick with CVV, he's clearly got the goods. There's not much you can do about bad luck (i.e., the crash).

As for Dean, he seemed to suffer from the same thing as Robbie the Rocket in that his whole team was helping the GC man instead of the sprinter, yet he still had a nice handfull of top 10 finishes. He also finished ninth in the green jersey competition. I'd think some more training as a sprinter to get that leadout man mentality out of his head and he could be right on target.

i think i'll go get me a burrito right now in celebration of a fine finish for an american.

I'm with ya on that one.

I might get 2!

Chipotle offered all cyclists in Gainesville free burritos yesterday. I took my wife there for dinner.

Yeah, I'm a hopeless romantic like that.

Yeah, I stand corrected. But who would've guessed he'd have such a tremendous performance when the tour began?

Garmin needs work horses at this point, like saxo bank has with voigt, cancelarra, and O'Grady

A few of the workhorses they had didn't ride the tour. I bet zabriskie could have helped with some of the pulls, at least on the flatter stages.

If there had been a TTT this year, Garmin would have killed.

Vandevaldendeveldavan is a true GC man. Talk about consistent. One little flub. That's amazing for a first-year attempt at leading and being the GC man. Props to Ryder, our boy, for making the break that day and helping pull Veldavandeldevaldevan back. Shame as Christian is a good guy, and you could see his confidence growing. Top 5 man, that is good. Sometimes Americans I find have it out of perspective. Cycling is religion in France, Spain and Italy. Cycling is like a 17th-tier sport in the States and Canada, just behind ice fishing and frisbee golf. You guys had an AMAZING run with Lemond and Armstrong, and then Landis -- although he turned out to have more testosterone than Ferrigno and a herd of angry wildebeest-s. Or maybe just a herd of Ferrignos and a wildebeest. I don't know, you get the pic.

Hold on to that boy, he is going to be a star. The team really missed Z. Put the TTT back in next year and look out for Garmin, especially with Vanveldevandedelde coming in with the level of confidence he left the tour with. Superb performance, chapeau, chapeau.

If they have the same setup as next year, then there are a few things that might provide VandeVelde some support.

Trent Lowe was riding his first Tour, expect the guy to improve next year and be more of a presence in the mountains.
Dave Z could have definitely stuck with contenders in the climbs at least for a while. If they have him healthy, that will be a huge bonus

The question really though is Christians age. Dude's 32 so him keeping the same form year over year is going to tough. I figure the tours only going to get tough with the schleck brothers and youngin like Kohl only getting better and Astana coming back.

A couple I know had one of their first "dates" at Costco where they ate dinner off of all the sample stations. They're happily married and comfortably well off and laugh about their "unplanned dinner" date.

I agree that CVV will be good for a year or two.

I disagree that Dave Z will be super useful. Useful, yes, not super useful. I don't know him at all but he seems to be fragile. I think Millar is the Voights of Garmin.

I don't hold too much confidence in their sprinters but that's a significant distraction when you're going for the overall. Imagine if Silence-Lotto didn't have to pay McEwen? They'd have two climbers instead, and maybe Evans would have had more at the end.

I wish I had more faith in Tom Danielson. He'll be a challenge to toughen/harden up, but if he got good, he'd be a great rider in the mountains. Vaughter's next challenge if he's still on the team.

I think that Vaughters & Co have proven their ideas. They will be the new CSC, the team that older riders will be willing to join in order to find some lost sparkle. Look at CVV, Millar, even Pate, the mustachio man, all these guys would have been sort of lost on Euro teams. Here they were all significant.

cdr

I concur. A sprinter is a liability if you're going for the GC.

Who was Postal/Discovery's sprinter, again?

Stop going for GC and get stage wins. Worked for Columbia!

Why, who do you really remember now; Cavs sprint or the way CSC just drove the race into the freaking ground?

Allan Davis, who barely missed on some big days. The big second I remember is Milan San Remo.

Columbia didn't have quite the GC hope (or confidence in their GC hope) like Garmin did. I have to think that Kim Kirchen used a lot of gas sprinting for stage finishes and going for the green jersey for a while. His guys were probably tired too, especially after they did a bunch of work setting up Cavendish, who I have a feeling will be remembered for his 4 wins. Once Cavendish went home and Kirchen blew up, the team could take it easy. Ciolek almost came through at the end but it didn't work out. Columbia definitely focused on immediate results, on stages, and their podium long shot fell short so it was okay.

Vaughters was convinced CVV would go well, said so when he signed CVV. I thought he was smoking crack personally but CVV pulled through, and as someone pointed out, he'd have been way up there had he not crashed on that one descent. They didn't have a sprinter - I mean, yeah, Julian Dean is good, but he doesn't lead out Thor Hushovd and accidentally beat him like Gert Steegmans did to Boonen. Vaughters was convinced of CVV's GC abilities and the wild card was David Millar and his TT and power-climbing. The second bit didn't work out but I think overall they should be very satisfied with their neo-Tour performance.

Personally I'm really happy for Danny Pate and his break and "coulda shoulda woulda" finish at the end of that long break. I've been a fan of his for a while:
http://sprinterdellacasa.blogspot.co...ate-style.html
I think he's too nice and works too hard and doesn't win like he could but that's part of what appeals to me. He's a good guy racing a bike for a living.

cdr

On the Columbia note, if Linus Gerdemann didn't break his leg back in... (June/May?), he would've been their GC contender. He can clearly climb, has the stamina, and has been developing is TT like a bat out of hell. If I recall correctly, in the instance where he broke his leg - he was in the TT, crashed badly, had to get a bike swap, got back on his bike and finished the TT only missing the best time by a few seconds. Only after he stopped over the line did the medics get to him...

The future Tour may be a Schleck vs. Gerdemann vs. CVV :D

plus little Shleck plus Contador. Fun times!

Both. It's not the yellow jersey that I was talking about today at work, it was the way Team CSC dominated the second half of the race and the guy with rocket thrusters for legs that got all those stage wins. Really, those were the hot topics.

I'm still trying to remember what Slipstream was doing, I think it had something to do with winning time trials or some such.

There were putting guys in breaks and gunning for a podium until CVV crashed.

Don't forget about Mic Rodgers. On stage 8 last year he was the virtual yellow jersey on the road when he crashed out. He didn't ride the tour this year due to a virus earlier in the season.

Columbia is pretty stacked. If everyone stays, they may come in with a CSC-like team next year. Any news on a TTT next year? I would love to see a Columbia/Astana/Garmin showdown. Maybe add in the artist formerly known as Gerolsteiner and the new Russian superteam too.

Exactly. They were just another ``also ran'' that didn't win anything. I'm proud of what they did, but it's not a memorable performance that will go down in the books.

And it was their first year at the tour, much like Barlow World last year. Give the team some time to mesh. Think of CSC last year, not terribly spectacular, but very solid. These things take some freaking time.