When Boulder’s Team Slipstream/Chipotle toes the line Saturday in Sicily for its historic first start in a Grand Tour race, its emotional leader and unofficial captain won’t be the suave, decorated David Millar. It won’t be David Zabriskie, the only American to win stages in all three Grand Tours of France, Italy and Spain.
It’ll be a 31-year-old from Lemont, Ill., who was a young prodigy and got his tail kicked, couldn’t stick with Team U.S. Postal Service and nearly walked away from the sport three years ago. Then again, who better to lead a young, revolutionary cycling team than a guy who has been through it all and married his grade-school sweetheart?
That’s why Christian Vande Velde will be the man in the middle for Slipstream/Chipotle when it opens the Giro d’Italia in Palermo with the team time trial.
Not to say the others look up to him, but teammate Tom Danielson of Durango said, “He’s the homecoming king.”
Team director Jonathan Vaughters never officially designated Vande Velde as team captain. In cycling, you don’t wear a big “C” on your Lycra. But a cycling captain is as important in a peloton as a hockey captain is on the ice.
He’s the team’s eyes and ears. He knows when a rider is hurting. He knows when a rider isn’t hurt but is acting like it.
“I feel I’ve been up. I’ve been down. I’ve been sideways,” Vande Velde said. “I wouldn’t say I’m the most gifted by any means, but I’m quite well-rounded in the best way.”
When Vaughters pieced this team together, Millar, Zabris-kie and Vande Velde were clearly the Three Amigos who gave Slipstream/Chipotle its zing, its peloton cred. He didn’t know who would emerge as a Grand Tour contender. He still doesn’t.
Experience counts
But talk to other riders and Vaughters, and it’s clear Vande Velde has emerged as the go-to guy when a young rider wakes up with aching quads and faces 30 miles of climbing that day.
“He’s been around for so long,” Danielson said. “He understands — at least us Americans — what we go through in the peloton. When one of us is having a problem, we can go to him and go: ‘Hey, look, this is what’s happening to me in the races. Did this happen to you?’ ”
Chances are it has. Vande Velde arrived on the pro scene “arrogant and cocky,” as he put it. And why not? He was 21 and arguably the top amateur rider in the U.S. He signed on with U.S. Postal and a guy named Lance Armstrong.
The Alps didn’t look so tough. Yeah, right.
“I remember Davis Phinney (America’s winningest cyclist) saying a lot of different things to me when I first turned pro,” Vande Velde said. “I was getting bullheaded, and everything Davis told me came true.”
Vande Velde learned riding the Vuelta de España was a little tougher than an amateur race around Breckenridge. He was beaten badly early. Then came injuries. He developed hip and back ailments, and U.S. Postal couldn’t wait for him to heal. Despite helping Armstrong to two of his seven consecutive Tour de France titles, Vande Velde left Postal in 2003.
“I was more or less forced to leave,” he said. “It was complete business.”
In need of a change
After a miserable, painful year with the Spanish club Liberty Seguros, he signed with the Danish team CSC in 2005, but by that June was ready to lock up the bike. One day at 3:30 a.m., Vande Velde sat in the study of his home in Girona, Spain, and called Vaughters, his old Postal roommate who was starting this team in Colorado that required weekly drug testing.
“I said: ‘I’m done. I don’t feel like I can do this anymore. I’m sick of doing rehab and sick of being stressed out and working an uphill battle,’ ” Vande Velde said. “Jon was like: ‘There’s a job waiting for you if you want it. Just keep on trying first.’ ”
Vande Velde wound up having a great season with CSC, then last year took second in the Tour of Georgia and sixth in the Tour of California. Since signing with Slipstream/Chip-otle, he is reminding people why he was viewed as the next big American star. He has finished in the top 10 in every race he has entered, including third in the Tour of California.
The Giro is a different beast. So is the Tour de France in July. Back to back, they’ve eaten many a cyclist alive. Vaughters, however, has seen something in his old buddy, something that may shock others.
“If he comes out of the Giro healthy and rests properly in between,” Vaughters said, “there’s no reason I can think of that Christian wouldn’t be top five in the Tour de France.”
Now that would be cause for admiration.
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
