Tejay van Garderen ushering in post-Armstrong era of American cycling

Despite doping scandals, revoked titles and a ban for life, Lance Armstrong is still the biggest name in American cycling. Despite the strongest Tour de France field in years, Armstrong’s charity ride of two stages a day before the race is the biggest cycling headline in the United States. 

And in spite of a strong, young American rider who finished fifth at the 2014 Tour, Armstrong’s name was still brought up in a conversation about that rider, the No. 1 American cyclist, Tejay van Garderen. 

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“(Lance) offered to motorpace me when I needed it in my training,” van Garderen said on a conference call prior to the Tour. “My current motor pacer was out of town and I didn’t see any harm in it. He said there was going to be a camera crew coming and I could duck out if I wanted to. 

“I was more interested in my day of training than anything else I had two hours of motorpacing on my training schedule so I was like, ‘Let’s get it in.’ ”

Van Garderen doesn’t care that American cycling is still caught up in Armstrong’s historic rise and fall from cycling fame. He shouldn’t — he’s got a name to make for himself, and with it, a chance to re-spark the U.S.'s interest in cycling. 

The 26-year-old is the leader of BMC Racing for a second year and has yellow jersey hopes for the 2015 Tour. After a strong second-place finish at the Critérium du Dauphiné and two fifth-place finishes in past Tours — 2012 and 2014 — van Garderen feels like he’s in perfect form with more power in his pedals than he’s ever had.

His leadership opportunity came years after working as a domestique for Mark Cavendish and Cadel Evans. Both experiences helped shape van Garderen into a well-rounded cyclist, perfect preparation to become a top general classification rider in the Tour.

With Cavendish and Team HTC-Columbia in 2010 and 2011, the focus was on stage finishes, sprinting and time trials. Van Garderen learned how to navigate the flat stages and respond to attacks at the front of the peloton. With Evans and BMC Racing in 2012, the yellow jersey was the goal, so van Garderen helped Evans in the mountains and time trials and it paid off. Van Garderen got the green light in the final week and finished fifth and won the white jersey for best young rider.

Ever since, he’s been training as a general classification rider.

“It’s been a lot of tweaking and figuring out like what the 2012 showed me what I was capable of and it’s been a learning process,” van Garderen said. “Last year, it was kind of a rough and tumble with the broken hip in (the Tour de) Romandie and all the crashes that happened during the Tour. 

“This year, I feel like things have gone very smooth. I feel like I’m hitting perfect form at the right time and if we can avoid all the pitfalls in the dangerous first week I think we might just have it figured out.”

His biggest competition, though, is the ‘big four’: 2013 Tour de France winner Chris Froome, two-time Tour champion Alberto Contador, 2014 Tour winner Vincenzio Nibali and a young, excellent climber, Nairo Quintana. 

“There’s a reason they’re put in that five-star favorite status,” he said. “I hope after this year’s Tour to be put in a realm with those guys. So no, I’m not offended in any way that I’m not mentioned with them.

“It’s not when those guys attack I say, ‘OK, see you later.’ I’m getting closer to them.”

If he does it, van Garderen could surely reset the American cycling standard of excellence. Only one American has officially won the Tour — Greg LeMond in 1986, 1989 and 1990 — and there are only three U.S. riders in this year’s race. 

If he doesn’t, he’ll have plenty of opportunities in the future.

“I’m 26 years old, I’ll be 27 in August. That’s certainly not young but that’s not even really hitting the peak by cycling standards,” van Garderen said. “I really want to make the podium or even higher. Anything’s possible. But to say putting in all of my chips and it’s now or never, it’s not now or never. 

“I think I have a good six-to-eight more years of trying to make the podium or win the Tour.”

Keep your ears open for the name Tejay van Garderen. You’ll be hearing it a lot more in the future, hopefully supplanting the names of the past.

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'Ride of Silence' cycling event planned for Wednesday in Doylestown

In memory of cyclists killed in road accidents, Doylestown Borough and the Central Bucks Bicycle Club will sponsor the seventh annual Ride of Silence Wednesday evening.

Police officers, emergency responders from the Central Bucks Ambulance and Rescue and fire vehicles will lead the riders on a flat, 6-mile course through the region with police directing traffic to allow the cyclists to pass through busy intersections.

Registration begins at 6 p.m. at Central Bucks West High School in the student parking lot at School Lane and Lafayette Street. The ride will begin at 7 p.m. All riders must wear helmets, use hand signals and keep talking to a minimum during the event.

The annual ride — “in memory of fallen riders” — began in New Zealand and now is held on every continent. Last year, 12,434 cyclists participated in 372 locations.

“Our ride continues to be one of the top-attended rides with more than 100 riders each year,” event organizer and Doylestown Borough Councilman Don Berk said in a statement on the borough’s website.

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Cycling races begin Friday along Fox River towns

Three days of competitive cycling begins Friday as participants in the Fox River Omnium take to the streets in East Dundee, Elgin and Fox River Grove.

Sponsored by PSIMET Custom Wheels in East Dundee and sanctioned by USA Cycling, the races begin 3 p.m. Friday in East Dundee, 8 a.m. Saturday in Elgin, and 10 a.m. Sunday in Fox River Grove.

Riders from all over the nation and world compete in these races.

The East Dundee Cycling Shootout is a new race this year and gives the village a chance to showcase its downtown, said Village President Lael Miller.

"It's a great event," Miller said. "It's the type of thing we want to see in downtown. It's going to attract a lot of people. For the last two years, we've been undergoing a dramatic renovation of downtown. This is really going to put a spotlight on town so people can see how much we have improved."

PSIMET, a new business in town that makes custom wheels for bicycles, decided to add East Dundee to the weekend roster, which includes the long-standing Elgin Cycling Classic and the Fox River Grove Criterium.

"I absolutely see this as an annual event," said Miller, who will be watching the races from the downtown Depot, also known as the Dundee Township Visitor's Center at 319 N. River St.

East Dundee's races end at 7 p.m. While there is a lot of ongoing roadwork in downtown, village crews have cleaned up the race route for spectators, Miller added.

The Fox River Grove series of bike races will end about 4 p.m. Sunday. Residents there can watch the races from their front yards or the grandstand on Ski Hill Road.

No parking will be allowed on the streets along the racecourse from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, according to the village.

Village officials are asking residents who live along the racecourse to leave their cars in the garage or driveway, and wait to move cars until the 10-minute periods between races, or park outside the area. When moving cars between races, residents are asked to follow the race marshal's instructions, drive slowly in a counterclockwise direction of the races, and watch for cyclists surveying the course.

Fox River Grove police officers and volunteers will be stationed on all corners around the course to help vehicles entering and leaving the area between races where necessary. Straw bales will be temporarily placed on mailboxes, light poles, and hydrants along the course for cyclists' safety. For a current status of the course, call (815)-762-1083.

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Cycling is the perfect sport for transvestites

Mountain biking has been a dusty thread running through my life. It has helped keep me sane and thin enough to fit into 15-year-old dresses. I never feel more alive than when I slip out of the studio late on a sunny weekday afternoon, zip out through north-east London and hit Epping Forest dirt just as rush hour begins behind me. It may not be the Alps or even the Lakes but I enter a world where all that matters is the twisting trail, my burning thighs and riding as fast as possible over bumps.
A big part of sport for me is the benefit for mental health. Nothing combats feeling depressed or anxious like a good hard workout. Mountain biking takes me out of my studio, out of my head and into my body and the countryside. Haring down a hillside leaves no time to ponder. You live in the moment, you focus on not crashing.

It is a little-known fact that I invented the mountain bike when I was 14 in 1974, in the back of a biology exercise book. Like a lot of my mates, I liked to ride my stripped-down road bike fitted with speedway-style handlebars through the Essex woods, over bumps and bomb holes. Riding a bicycle wasn’t a sport to me then. My stepfather and mother made home a place of brooding violence and frightening hysterical outbursts of shouting and screaming. My bike got me out of the house and away from my dysfunctional family.

In the summer a few friends and I would pedal to the nearest patch of lumpy ground and dare each other to roll down steep banks or leap off mounds, pretending to be Evel Knievel jumping over buses. These off-road excursions inevitably led to violent equipment malfunction so I used to doodle bikes designed to withstand the rigours of off-road fun.
What I drew were hybrids between a bicycle and a motocross bike and, 40 years later, you can buy one complete with sophisticated suspension and fat knobbly tyres. I didn’t get the credit for inventing the mountain bike because I never went on to build one – unlike the pioneers of the sport, who around the same time were holding downhill bicycle races on a dirt road on Mount Tamalpais, just over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco.

By the time early mountain bikes were available in Britain, I was heavily into skateboarding. This was how I got my adrenaline kicks for a decade or so from 1977, until falling off on to concrete started to hurt too much. Mountain biking, by contrast, seemed a relatively safe way to keep fit in comparison. And by the late 80s, mountain bikes were everywhere in Britain – in fact, they had saved cycling.
I was quickly drawn from tootling through Epping Forest into the organised sport, and participated in my first cross-country mountain bike race in 1992. I clearly remember the immediate visceral thrill of being nakedly competitive (as opposed to covert rivalries with fellow artists; who did the best in that auction? How many people went to see his show?). Passing my first fellow racer I almost joyfully shouted, “Eat my dirt, loser!”
I soon became obsessed and the racing gave me a goal to train hard. One year, I took on an online coach to tailor my training. I wanted to find out just how fit and fast I could get, which turned out to be fairly quick. I even won a couple of local races. I was doing two or three-hour sessions four times a week. I would take my heart rate first thing every morning and record it on a graph, and bore on about anaerobic thresholds and fartlek training.
There is a popular idea that artists are not supposed to be sporty and so this only added to the attraction for me; like pottery, sport was, well, a bit naff. Racing also gave me an insight into a different subculture, clean-cut men eyeing each other at the start – how lean is he? Should I grid up in front of him, will he hold me up? After the race, a glorious rush of endorphins, sweaty dusty men, all high on natural chemicals, comparing notes and battle scars. In the race, no one knew me as an artist – I was just the bloke who came fifth.

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