Sunday 20 November 2011 at 16h19
Thursday night, Team Garmin-Cervélo 2012 has been officially presented in the Theater of Boulder in the state Colorado of the United States. 30 riders and 5 directeurs sportifs will make up the team next year: 10 riders have left the team in the interseason and it will have 11 new riders, making up for a total of the maximum number of 30 riders*.
The last minute addition, Thomas Dekker, suspended -because he was convicted of doping- from July 2009 till July 2011, was probably the most important information of the night, next to the arrival which had already been announced of Alex Rasmussen, who missed out on three doping checks due to a bad declaration of his whereabouts but who has finally not been punished due to a technicality in the procedure.
Usually, the team presentations take place in January, either just before or just after the Tour Down Under. Garmin-Cervélo however seized the occasion of its first training session with its 2012 team to place the presentation at the end of it.
The hidden singer talents of David Zabriskie
During the night, David Zabriskie, one of the riders of the team and the man behind DZ Nuts did his own show, by singing a quite original version of Proud Mary, "Rolling on the Garmin":(source: CyclingNews.com)
The speech of Jonathan Vaughters, manager of Team Garmin-Cervélo
He illustrated this by saying that Garmin-Cervélo will be the first to:
- empathise and forgive
- demonstrate that cycling is truly a team sport and not won by one individual
- herald the forgotten efforts of those behind the scenes
- treat (their) riders as equals and partners
- believe in a younger generation
- perform beyond anyone's expectations
- show that It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog (Mark Twain)
You can check out this speech in CyclingNews.com's video here:
The new riders for Garmin-Cervélo in 2012
The following 11 riders will join Team Garmin-Cervélo in 2012:CONTINUE READING AFTER THIS ADVERTISEMENT
Jack Bauer
This is a young rider from New-Zealand, who will celebrate his 27th birthday in April 2012 and who will join the American team from the English Endura Racing team. His main victory was the National Championships of New-Zealand in 2010, but he also mentions the Tielt Kermesse in Belgium in October 2009 as one of his important victories himself. He explains why on the website of his current team: not a big race but the start of bigger things and a memorable day for me! Another important point in his career so far was for him his victory in the 2nd stage of the Tour of Southland in 2009 which gave him the 2nd place in the general classification of this race.
Jack started cycling on a mountainbike and started his road career in 2007.Thomas Dekker
TD, for Thomas Dekker, had quite a turbulent career so far. Professional since 2005, Dekker made quite a quick progress, with a victory in Tirreno-Adriatico in 2006, the victory in the 6th stage of the Tour of Switzerland in 2007. He continued with a good Tour de France and became the last winner of the Drei-Länder-Tour in Germany after having won 2 stages.
In 2008, Thomas Dekker didn't get to taste victory but he got several podium places that year. In the middle of the season he's not in a good shape and at the end of July 2008, the UCI announced having discovered abnormal blood values, which could indicate the use of doping.
After having spent 4 years in the Rabobank team, at the time Michael Boogerd ends his career, Dekker decided to change teams and signed a 2 year contract with Silence-Lotto. Finally he didn't race a lot for this team because in July 2009 his new team announced that the UCI tested him positively on EPO, based on samples which had been kept since the end of 2007. Thomas Dekker rapidly confessed having regularly used doping and he was thus suspended for 2 years.
At the end of this suspension, in July this year, Thomas Dekker started with some criteriums, before being employed by the Chipotle Development Team, the training team of Garmin-Cervélo and last Thursday it was thus announced that Jonathan Vaughters thought he showed enough progress, in a controlled way (since almost one and a half year he's been regularly tested, both on performance and on blood values; where his performance progressed regularly, his blood values remained normal and the manager of the Amercian team thus decided to keep faith in him and give him a second chance ...).Koldo Fernandez
For a Spanish basque rider like Koldo Fernandez it's not really surprising that he did his whole pro career so far (since 2004) in the Euskaltel-Euskadi team.
In 2012 the Spanish rider will seek new adventures in the Team Garmin-Cervélo looking for new sprint victories ...Nathan Haas
Just like Will Clarke for Team Leopard-Trek, Nathan Haas will become a neo pro in 2012 with Team Garmin-Cervélo coming from the Australian Genesys Wealth Advisers team.
After having started his cycling career on a mountainbike, the philosophy student at the university of Sydney switched to road cycling in 2009. Recently he won the Herald Sun Tour 2011, battling against big teams like Skil-Shimano, Saxobank-Sunguard, Omega Pharma-Lotto and his future team, Garmin-Cervelo!CONTINUE READING AFTER THIS ADVERTISEMENT
Alex Howes
The American rider Alex Howes has always been quite close to the team he'll join in 2012 (except for 2008 when he rode with the jersey of the French amateur team VC La Pomme Marseille). He joins Team Garmin-Cervélo coming from the Chipotle Development Team, the continental team and training team which is also part of Slipstream Sports. In 2009 Howes became U23 Champion of the United States, a race in which he took the silver medal in 2010.Robbie Hunter
The South-African rider Robert Hunter, or more commonly Robbie (and not Robby as his future team seems to think) is all but a neo pro. He started his career in 1999 at Lampre-Daikin and has already been part of the Amercian team he joins in 2012 in 2010, than still called Garmin-Transitions. After a one year contract with Team Radioshack he thus returns to Garmin-Cervélo.
His main victories are the stage victories in the Vuelta a España in 1999 and in 2001 (Lampre) and in the Tour de France 2007, than for the Barloworld team. In 2004, for Rabobank, he won the Tour of Qatar and the best sprinter's classification of the Tour de Suisse. This year he won the Tour de Mumbai II ahead of Elia Viviani (Liquigas-Cannondale).Raymond Kreder
Michel Kreder, already member of Team Garmin-Cervélo since 2010, has a brother, Raymond Kreder, who will join the American pro team after having been part of its different reserve teams, lastly in the Chipotle Development Team.
He already came to Garmin-Transitions as a trainee at the end of 2010 and he participated in Paris-Tours (photo) among others at that time.Jacob Rathe
Another rider coming from Chipotle Development Team is the young American (he'll celebrate his 21st birthday in March) Jacob Rathe.
This year, the young Rathe won the 9th stage of the Tour of Portugal and the 4th stage of the Rutas de América.CONTINUE READING AFTER THIS ADVERTISEMENT
Alex Rasmussen
Alex Rasmussen's history is quite remarkable. The track specialist rode on the road for the Saxo Bank and HTC-Highroad teams before joining Team Garmin-Cervélo in 2012. He didn't ride the whole year for HTC-Highroad however, since mid-September the American team which stopped at the end of this season ended his contract when it was informed of a missed doping control which turned out to be the 3rd for the Danish rider.
Immediately after this announcement his contract was thus ended, based on the internal rules of the team. However, many riders commented this case, saying that it probably had nothing to do with doping, simply because Rasmussen doesn't take his obligation to fill in his whereabouts (in the ADAMS application) seriously enough and it would thus simply be due to negligence.
The international anti doping code however doesn't take into account absent-minded athletes and Alex Rasmussen, who already signed his contract with Garmin-Cervélo at that time, would thus normally have been suspended. However, a technicality allowed the procedure to be stopped before it got there: the UCI informed the Danish anti doping committee only 10 weeks after the missed test while this should be done within 14 days according to the rules. Therefore the procedure became impossible and this meant there wouldn't be any suspension. He's thus quite lucky and can join his new team, Team Garmin-Cervélo, in 2012 without any further trouble.Sebastien Rosseler
The Belgian rider Sébastien Rosseler joins Garmin-Cervélo coming from Team Radioshack where he won in 2010 the 4th stage of the Volta ao Algarve and the Flèche Brabançonne (Brabantse Pijl), and in 2011 the Three Days of the Panne (Driedaagse van de Panne).
The Belgian rider, who did most of his career (2005 till 2009) with Quick Step, is a good time trial rider.Fabian Wegmann
Another rider with a lot of experience, the German Fabian Wegmann started his pro career with Gerolsteiner in 2002, spent 2 years with Milram in 2009 and 2010 and one year with Team Leopard-Trek. His career was thus marked by the stories of cycling teams coming and going (Gerolsteiner which stopped in 2008, Milram in 2010 and Leopard-Trek which merges with Radioshack at the end of 2011).
The German Champion in 2007 and 2008 also won the KOM classification of the Giro d'Italia 2004 and some one day races before 2011 (Rund um den Finanzplatz Eschborn-Frankfurt 2010, Rund um den Henninger Turm 2009, GP Miguel Indurain 2006 and 2008, ...).
* provided that it has 2 to 5 neo-pro's in the team
The riders who stay with the team
Among those who stay with the team we also find Andrew Talansky (since 2011, a young and promising rider), Christophe Le Mével (since 2011, mainly a Grand Tour rider), the winner of Paris-Roubaix 2011 Johan Van Summeren (since 2010 with Garmin), Michel Kreder (also with Garmin since 2010), the Brazilian rider Murilo Fischer (also since 2010), the Lithuanian Champion Ramunas Navardauskas (since this year) and Sep Vanmarcke (idem).
The riders who went elsewhere
The most important one is the 2010 World Champion Thor Hushovd who found a more interesting contract with BMC Racing Team (which seems to collect former World Champions), but also Jack Bobridge, Julian Dean, Brett Lancaster, Cameron Meyer and his brother Travis Meyer and Matt Wilson who all leave for the new Australian team GreenEDGE.
Roger Hammond, Daniel Lloyd and Gabriel Rasch didn't seem to find a new team.
>> Click here to see a selection of photos of the Team Garmin-Cervélo 2012 presentation (on the team's Flickr account, opens in a new window)
source illustration image of this article: background: Robert S. Donovan, Flickr, Creative Commons; adaptation: Thomas Vergouwen / velowire.com
door Thomas Vergouwen
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