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.”
