American Will Ride the Tour de Suisse

Boulder, CO - Christian Vande Velde, the Garmin-Slipstream team leader who sustained major injuries after crashing out of the Giro d’Italia in May, will compete in the 2009 Tour de Suisse later this week. The event marks Vande Velde’s return to racing. The American suffered seven fractures, including five vertebrae, one rib and his pelvis during a crash in stage three of the Giro.

Team officials credit the comeback to Vande Velde’s motivation and rigorous training but caution that he is still recovering. The American, who was in the top five in last year’s Tour de France, was back on his bike just days after his final medical examinations and has kept up the pace ever since.

“I said from the beginning that I was motivated to get back into my racing season,” said Vande Velde. “To be honest, the recovery has been excruciating at times, but at the end of a long, hard day I have the satisfaction of knowing I’m doing all I can to get back to my team. I’m excited to see how Suisse goes for me.”

The Tour de Suisse, a 9-stage race, kicks off Saturday, June 13 in Liechtenstein, Switzerland.

“Christian is a fighter, and he is still recovering from very significant injuries. The Tour of Suisse will be a good gauge for him to see what kind of condition he could be in should he ride the Tour de France,” said Jonathan Vaughters. “Less than a month ago he was in a hospital bed in Italy. To come back this quickly is truly a testament to his character.”

Photo by Ken Conley

Thousands of fans lined the streets of downtown St. Louis to watch Team Garmin-Chipotle’s Christian Vande Velde cross the finish line safely and win the 2008 Tour of Missouri. Vande Velde, winner of Stage Three’s Individual Time Trial, was awarded the Missouri Tourism Yellow Jersey for the race after successfully maintaining an 18-second lead over Michael Rogers of Team Columbia who finished second in the General Classification. Svein Tuft of Symmetrics rounded out the podium in third place.

“It’s been a really great race from day one,” said Vande Velde, who finished fifth in the 2008 Tour de France. “I didn’t expect to win the time trial, but from then on, it was game on with everyone throwing everything at us, trying to take away the 21-second gap I had from the time trial. In the end, I was happy that everyone gave us such a fight because the win means that much more to us.”

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Kids were out in force at the start where each class visited their adopted team.

Steven Cozza (Garmin-Chiptole)
“It [the moustache] started to go out of style, I was tired of eating hair with my food. Plus that Italian racer started growing his and kind of ruined it, I had to share it off.”

“It’s going to be a battle, we’re going to be riding in the front, it’s going to be really painful but I think we’re strong enough and we can do it. ”

George Hincapie (Columbia) puts in an attack in the first kilometers

Garmin-Chipotle team leading the field at the second KOM

Christan Vande Velde (Garmin-Chipotle)

“I was concerned all day. It was a brutally hard day and they threw everything at us, the team did a great job. There was no respite at all today. we want just trying to control it as much as we can. The strategy is to keep control of the race and not let anybody go.”

Dominique Rollin (Toyota-United), KOM
” tomorrow there’s only one KOM in the stage and I have a good enough lead to not worry about those points and just maybe hope for a little breakaway to take over those points and we can relax and wait for the final in the sprint. I think we build enough lead on the points scale so this way we can just keep on going for our ultimate goal, a stage win in this year’s edition.”

Mike Barry (Columbia), stage winner and Most Agressive
Our strategy today was to make the race as hard as possible for Garmin. We have a couple of guys that are very close in the classification and we’d like to wrestle it away from Christian. We have to make the race as hard as possible, to isolate him and we managed to do that towards the end of the race and we kept attacking until the end and I found myself in position to go for the stage win. The team rode really well today and really it could have been any of the guys with the opportunity to go for the victory, it just happened to be me to attack, I attacked at the right time and got away.

Eric Baumann (Sparkasse), second on stage

“A really tough stage, all the time up and down, very fast. My team did a really good job, we were able to put guys in the big breakaway and at the end, only one guy was stronger than us. For us, it’s okay second place.”

“We do all the time in Europe the races, then we had a chance to come over here and we want to keep this chance so we can come in the nest years with these nice tours. I am only here for bikes, baby clothes and gap for my kids (laughs). ”

All photos copyright Lyne Lamoureux

American Christian Vande Velde claimed dominance to the rest of the field, winning the individual time trial in Branson Wednesday at the Tour of Missouri.

Vande Velde, who finished an impressive 5th at this year’s Tour de France, finished the 18-mile race against the clock in 39 minutes and 51 seconds.

“The win was actually a bit of a surprise,” said Vande Velde, who recently fell off form at the Olympics less than a month ago, finishing 17th there. “This reinvigorates me, honestly. This was a big challenge. And, to beat the guy who won three world championships is big.”

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Boulder, CO – Slipstream Sports is providing fans with a rare opportunity to spend an evening with the riders and staff of Team Garmin-Chipotle presented by H30 and Team 5280/Felt. The event, to be held on Tuesday, August 19th at 7:00 p.m., will commence with a rose champagne toast to pay homage to the Maglia Rose and will include a five course meal from Denver’s award-winning Table 6 accompanied by unique artisanal wines correlating with the regions of the Tour de France. Only 50 tickets are available for the event, proceeds of which will help raise money for Team 5280/Felt, a junior cycling team for riders ages 10-18 years of age.

The evening will include an auction of Christian Vande Velde’s autographed pink jersey from the Giro d’Italia as well as items from this year’s Tour de France. In addition, fans will be given the opportunity to sample wines from regions visited in the 2008 Tour de France, selected by Todd Mathis, National Sales Manager for Martine’s Wines and a Masters of wine candidate, and Slipstream CEO and wine geek extraordinaire, Jonathan Vaughters. Members of Team 5280/Felt and Team Garmin-Chipotle presented by H30 that are tentatively expected to be in attendance include Danny Pate, Will Frischkorn and Jonathan Vaughters.

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The Tour De France is one of the most intense and grueling events in all of sports!

VERSUS, the exclusive cable television home of the Tour De France, is celebrating clean competition with “Take Back the Tour”. The campaign was created to champion the riders who compete clean, while giving a platform and a voice to the passionate fan base that supports them.

Check out Christian Vandevelde talk about racing in this year’s Tour de France through the mountains.

Colorado Springs, Colo. — USA Cycling announced today 21 of its 24 nominees to the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team, including all 16 men’s athletes across the disciplines of road cycling, track cycling, mountain biking and bicycle motocross (BMX). Additionally, USA Cycling formally announced five automatic women’s nominees across the four Olympic disciplines of cycling.

Of the 21 athletes named on Tuesday, 12 earned automatic nominations under USA Cycling’s Olympic selection procedures, while nine additional athletes were nominated to the Olympic Team by a nine-person selection committee according to USA Cycling’s Principles of Discretion.

ROAD CYCLING
In the discipline of road cycling, a total of five men were nominated to the Olympic Team, while one automatic nomination to the women’s squad was announced.

On the men’s side, only one athlete earned an automatic nomination, while USA Cycling made four discretionary picks.

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