When the Tour de France starts Saturday in the Netherlands, Boulder-based team Cannondale-Garmin will be lining up with nine riders that team manager Jonathan Vaughters calls the “most motivated” group he’s taken to cycling’s premiere race.
The sentiment is understandable. Last year’s Tour ended in profound disappointment, with 26-year-old American leader Andrew Talansky after crashes on consecutive stages.
The team — which last year rode under the Garmin-Sharp name — merged with the Italian-based Cannondale team last year. This Tour squad is younger than in years past and is once again built around getting Talansky to the highest possible individual finish, with Ireland’s Dan Martin and Canadian Ryder Hesjedal riding as co-leaders.
“Dan and Ryder are both guys that can do a really good race in GC (General Classification), but in more of a wild card respect,” Vaughters told The Denver Post on Thursday. “We’re focusing more on stage wins for them — in the mountains, Mur de Huy (Stage 3).
“Andrew is a more strictly focused GC rider that we’re going to help in a more traditional GC way.”
Talansky is having a much quieter start this year: He won the time trial nationals in May, but was 10th at the Critérium du Dauphiné in mid-June (he won it in 2014).
The Tour’s first 10 days promise to be especially dramatic, with terrain exposed to heavy crosswinds, plus obstacles including cobblestones, roundabouts, and short, steep, sharp climbs once riders pedal into Belgium, before arriving in France.
“I think by the time the team time trial rolls around in Stage 9, you are going to see some of the favorites just eliminated from the race,” Vaughters said. “They might still be racing, but they’ll be 20 minutes down. Or they’ll be out of the race, or who knows. I think it’s going to be a fairly selective race in the first 10 days, and then … those who are left standing, it becomes the death march of the mountains. The mountain stages are very tough and get increasingly tougher, all the way to the very end this year.”
Vaughters is to Cannondale-Garmin what John Elway is to the Broncos — he sets the roster, negotiates the contracts and manages business and sponsor relationships, but generally leaves day-to-day coaching and execution to others. For this year’s Tour, that role belongs to directeur sportif Charly Wegelius.
“We are going into the Tour de France with three leaders, all who have very different riding styles, and those styles complement each other. Andrew, Dan and Ryder have shown they work well together, and that will translate to the roads of the Tour,” Wegelius said in a statement announcing the team’s roster.
Vaughters contends that a roster with three stronger riders will allow them to exercise creativety, throwing one or two of the three co-leaders in a long breakaway — forcing other teams to chase — while keeping one or two back in the peloton. Where and when Cannondale-Garmin would do that, Vaughters wouldn’t say.
“Our ideal secenario is that neither Dan, nor Ryder nor Andrew have lost any significant amount of time in those first 10 days,” Vaughers said. “And if we go in with three guys all sort of in the top 20 or top 30 going into the mountains, then they can really play their cards and play off one another in the mountains. That’s a very optimistic scenario. If we get two out of three, or even one out of three in that secnario, we’ll be happy.”
Talansky will face some of this generation’s strongest riders — Alberto Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo), Chris Froome (Sky) and Vincenzo Nibali (Astana), all former Tour winners. But the man to beat may be 25-year-old Colombian Nairo Quintana, last year’s Giro d’Italia winner whose specialty is climbing, whose team is strong in the team time trial and who’s comfortable riding when the weather turns adverse.
Only three American riders will be in the peloton overall, the fewest since 1996 — Talansky, Tyler Farrar, 31; and part-time Aspen resident Tejay van Garderen, 26, the American with the best chance of finishing on the podium on the Champs-Élysées in Paris.
“I think one stage win in the Tour de France means you’ve done a good Tour de France — a solid B,” Vaughters said. “If you want an A-plus, if you want a solid 4.0 grade-point average in the Tour de France for our team, you need to have two stage wins and a rider in at least the top five or six.”
Team Cannondale-Garmin
A look at the nine riders on Boulder-based team Cannondale-Garmin for the 2015 Tour de France, which starts Saturday and ends July 26 in Paris.
| NAME | COUNTRY | ROLE |
| Andrew Talansky 10th in 2013 Tour de France, 2014 Dauphiné winner |
United States | Co-leader |
| Ryder Hesjedal 2012 Giro d’Italia winner |
Canada | Co-leader |
| Dan Martin 2013 Tour de France stage winner |
Ireland | Co-leader |
| Sebastian Langeveld Riding in his fourth Tour |
Netherlands | Road captain |
| Ramunas Navardauskas 2014 Tour de France stage winner |
Lithuania | Support |
| Jack Bauer 2010 National Road Race Championship winner |
New Zealand | Support |
| Kristijan Koren Riding in his sixth Tour |
Slovenia | Support |
| Dylan Van Baarle Riding in first Tour |
Netherlands | Support |
| Nathan Hass Riding in first Tour |
Australia | Support |
Daniel Petty: 303-954-1081, dpetty@denverpost.com or twitter.com/danielpetty
