Garmin-sharp ready toembrace “odd tactics”
Three lead riders provide options
The French are a proud people, and about the only aspect of their society they’re as proud of as their language and croissants is their little bike race they hold every July.
With the 100th anniversary of the Tour de France kicking off Saturday, commemorative books have already been written. Exhibitions will be shown. Amateur races will be held. A night finish into Paris will be run. The only thing missing from the big celebration are fireworks.
Entering, from stage way left, from Boulder, Colo., isTeam Garmin-Sharp.
Garmin-SharpCEOJonathanVaughters goes further outside the box for his strategy than he does hiswardrobe, which can only be described as avantodd. His race strategies aren’t exactly out of “Cycling for Dummies,” either.
Take last year’s USA Pro Challenge. Christian Vande Velde won on the final day.
“On paper, we shouldn’t have been able to beat (Tejay) van Garderen,” Vaughters said. “But we went out and attacked the race every single day, threwsome really odd tactics at everyone’s direction and knocked people off kilter a little bit. And it worked.
“In the Tour, we have to think a little along those lines.”
Garmin-Sharp remains a huge underdog on cycling’s biggest stage. The seediest gaming rooms in Paris wouldn’t post odds on it winning the Tour. It’s BritonChris Froome’s race to lose, with two-time winner Alberto Contador from Spain, having come off his two-year doping ban in 2012 to win the Vuelta de España.
But Garmin-Sharp, like a bottle rocket under a bike seat, can make some noise. It has three general classification (lead) riders: RyderHesjedal, Dan Martin and Andrew Talansky; an accomplished sprinter (Tyler Farrar); and a potential King of the Mountain winner (Boulder’s Tom Danielson).
By-the-book biking tactics state you send riders off the front to break up the peloton and make teams chase and tire. It’s usually the secondary riders,
Total route the pawns, who are sent out.
“Well, in the USA Pro Challenge,” Vaughters said, “the first day we sent our king and our queen and our rook and our bishop right off the front to basically force everyone to panic.”
It’s one thing to do that for a week. It’s another to do it for three weeks over 2,114.8 miles. Garmin-Sharp’s one small advantage is its trident star system. Hesjedal, Martin or Talansky could emerge as a contender, and no opponent will know whom to watch.
Hesjedal, 32, appears recovered from the illness that forced him to abandon his defense of his Giro d’Italia title last month.
“I was almost counting him out for theTour, but he has shown resiliency,” Vaughters said. “He’s going to be good.”
Talansky, 24, took second in ParisNice, second to Froome in the time trial at Tour de Romandie and third in the final stage of the Criterium du
Corsica