witty title.
Garmin havent been looking to peak for August and they havent had that bad a season. Millar won 3 days of Depane. Farrar was by far the best sprinter at the giro and wore the malia rossa for a while, so they got what they wanted from the giro.
They got good publicity in the tour for jullian deans and farrars podiums in a stage or 2 and more importantly as being the team best able to disrupt the Colombia train, and in the end, destroy the train completely by tempting renshaw to go mad(not that it mattered to cav in the end).
Oh and thats before we even get to rider heysdal, who came out of knowehere to get them even more out of the tour.
This was about as good as it could possibly get for them given the circumstances. Zabriskie crashed in the prologue. Millar on stage 1 and was very weak for much of the tour. Team leader 1 CVV crashed out painfully with a broken collarbone (again) in stage 2. Team Leader 2 Tyler Farrar crashed and broke his rist in stage 3 and while he was able to postpone his own inevitable pull out with great heart and courage, stage 3 pretty much did it for him too.
THats arguably their top 4 riders (before the tour who thought heysdal would do what he did) , crashing badly on each of the first 4 days, all significantly weakened and the 2 main ones having to pull out (while David Millar was so weak towards the end, as far as his team were concerned he might as well have pulled out)
I challenge any team to do that well with only their 6 weaker riders on the squad.