For a team which had never won a stage or worn yellow before this year’s Tour de France, the past three weeks have been an almost-unbelievable succession of achievements for the Garmin-Cervélo team. The team time trial victory started things off on the perfect note, putting Thor Hushovd into the Maillot Jaune for several days, then Tyler Farrar and Hushovd took stage wins, the latter nabbing two.
Tom Danielson has been racing at the front for the whole race, securing ninth overall in yesterday’s time trial, and the consistent performances of he and the other riders – particularly Christian Vande Velde and Ryder Hesjedal – have earned the American ProTeam a clear victory in the teams classification.
CEO Jonathan Vaughters was, as expected, very satisfied after the race against the clock. “It is incredible. We set out the Tour with five objectives,” he told VeloNation in a video interview. “It’s rare that you accomplish all five, and actually I thought that I might have been spreading the team too thin by trying to accomplish all five, because it was very much a balancing act between a the different personalities in the team.
“But the five objectives were to win stages with Tyler and Thor, and maybe someone else gets up… The second objective was to win the team time trial, we did that. Third objective was to hold the yellow jersey, did that, fourth objective was to get a guy in the top ten, did that. And the last objective, which I didn’t start talking about until a couple of days ago, as this one was tricky, was the team GC. All five objectives were accomplished. I don’t think ever in my time as a director that we have 100 percent accomplished that, and it is extremely rare in cyhcling. I am blown away by how hard the guys worked…
“We are the best team in the Tour de France, but we are also the most tired team in the Tour de France…that is for sure.”
One of the top performances has been that of Danielson, who was doing his first Tour at 33 years of age. His performance made it the fourth year in a row that the team has secured a top ten finish, each time doing so with riders who had not performed at that level before in the race.
Danielson’s progress had previously been slowed due to illness and injury, but also due to pressure. He was labelled the ‘next Armstrong’ when he was young and has never appeared comfortable in the media spotlight. Vaughters has helped keep that pressure off him, and prefers that things stay that way after the Tour.
“I don’t want to make the mistake of now loading pressure on him again,” he said. “At the end of the day, Tom is a rider who has taken a while to mature physically and psychologically,” he said, pointing out that he started racing late and took several seasons to learn the full craft.
“Now he has done this, is there progression for him to go? Yes, I am sure there is…we are definitely going to try to do that, but it would be a mistake to just load him back with ‘okay, next year you are going to be on the podium’. The key with Tom is just to keep him happy and focussed on the race. On the external stuff, if he can just keep all that behind him, he is a very talented athlete.”
Click on the image below for Vaughters’ full video interview.