Third in yesterday’s time trial and third overall starting today’s final stage, Tejay van Garderen was frustrated to miss out on the stage win and yellow jersey by just one second, but has said that he’s determined to do what he can to try to win the Critérium International today.
The young American rider lost out to Richie Porte (Sky), the rider he came up against in his attempt to take Paris-Nice, and once again finds himself looking for a way to dump the Australian out of the yellow jersey.
He’s the best young rider in the race but wants more than that. “Now it is time to put today behind us,” he said after the stage. “We celebrate the positives, which is the white jersey. We go into tomorrow trying to figure out a way to win this race.”
Today’s concluding 176 kilometre leg includes six categorised climbs, with the last of those – the Col de l'Ospedale – being a summit finish. Van Garderen knows that to win the race, he must shine there.
“I've studied the last climb a little bit and we saw the first part of it in training the other day,” he said. “It looks like a nice climb, it looks steady, and not too steep. It looks like it suits me pretty well. I'm going to try to do what I can.”
While he hasn’t raced up the climb before, his team-mate Cadel Evans has. The Australian won this race last year and had hoped to challenge again, but was only 74th in the time trial, 45 seconds back.
Evans blogged about yesterday’s two stages afterwards, saying that while the morning stage helped him to ‘open up’ his legs prior to doing a good time trial last year, that the race against the clock simply didn’t work out this time round. He didn’t go into specifics, but suggested something went wrong.
“Last year it worked a treat for me, this year small problem + small problem = bad TT,” he stated. “Anyway, nothing that effects longer term goals on the horizon. A bad result for me, but an Aussie victory the same, Richie Porte put his Paris-Nice work to good effect again today. Nice to see him able to out his efforts into his own results and palmarès.”
Evans knows that if his team is to win the race, that Van Garderen is its chance. He has pledged his support to the American and because he knows the final climb so well, his experience will be invaluable.
“I will be in 'domestique' mode tomorrow to our young Tejay,” he said. “With unfavourable weather and a good field on a hard course, it will no doubt be 'interesting'.”