Last Updated on April 29, 2023
Last year’s Tour de France was a nightmare for Tejay van Garderen. And I imagine he still wakes up in the middle of the night with visions of Team BMC’s collapse on the cycling world’s biggest stage. Just ask sporting manager Allan Peiper:
“We went to the Tour de France and it was a fiasco – Cadel wasn’t where he should have been, Tejay lost time for whatever reason and the team trial was a disaster. We lost a wheel somewhere and we needed to have a real hard think about what we were doing.”
Someone underperforming, lackluster performances, and a wheel popping off somewhere into oblivion…all that’s missing is Mr. Bean staring into a camera and making incoherent grunting noises.
Needless to say, Tejay van Garderen is ready to put it all behind him and become the star he is meant to be.
“Last year things just started falling apart. I didn’t have trouble all season. I was always on the podium at every race I did and all of a sudden everything unraveled at the Tour and it was the worst time to have that happen…But you’ve got to put that behind you and move forward and use it as motivation.”
And speaking of “putting things behind you,” what will happen to teammate Cadel Evans? He will not be racing at the Tour and was focused on the Giro d’Italia. But, if I look at the race results, it looks like Father Time won that race against Evans. The 37-year old was exhausted and not in any mood to discuss his future. From his lackluster performance at the Giro, to having to climb under the bus that Allan Peiper threw him under, are we seeing the twilight of the 2011 Tour winner?
Two careers and two different directions.
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