Tejay Van Garderen Discussion Thread

[This Charming Man]

My guess is TJ has a hunch there will not be much going in in Europe, work wise, better to be home with the fam.

 

[RedheadDane]

My guess is TJ has a hunch there will not be much going in in Europe, work wise, better to be home with the fam.

There certaintly won't be much going on in Europe, work wise, for him! I dunno if you've noticed, but there aren't that many races in the upcoming future.

 

[Bolder]

So this is it. solid career and he knows it's time to walk away. Is he the most successful post LA American rider ?

 

[More Strides than Rides]

So this is it. solid career and he knows it's time to walk away. Is he the most successful post LA American rider ?

I'm guessing you're saying Horner and his Vuelta is not post-LA (which is fair), Successful Tour rider, sure. But I bet that forum posters would prefer to have the careers of other retired or current US riders over TJ's.

 

[Breh]

Leipheimer? Or is he too old?

 

[roundabout]

4 podiums and 8 top 5s in major 1 week + stage races too. Ok, he didn't win one, but then I think only Talansky did post Leipheimer's great triumph in the 2011 Tour de Suisse.

 

[SHAD0W93]

So this is it. solid career and he knows it's time to walk away. Is he the most successful post LA American rider ?

dang forgetting our man Papi Horner like that. Levi Leipheimer without the clinical would have been the most successful in my opinion post LA.

If talking riders started after I think it is between him or Andrew Talansky (who most rated higher than TVG). Both are young only being 32 and only raced 12 and 8 seasons respectively.
TVG 28 wins. TdF Young Rider and 1 GdI stage win. Tour of California and 2x USA Pro Cycling Challenge winner. 2x 5Tdf and 10 VaE. 13 top 10's with 4 podiums in major week stage races.
Andrew Talansky 8 wins. Criterium du Dauphine. 10 Tdf 5 VaE and 7 VaE. 6 top 10's with 3 podiums in major week stage races. National TT Champion.
I guess if you like sprinters you could argue Tyler Farrar. 2 GdI, 1 TdF, and 3 VaE stages. 2x Vattenfall Cyclassics and 1x Scheldeprijs. 31 career wins but a B sprinter even in his peak.

Taylor Phinney or Adrien Costa without the accident or focused on cycling could have been more successful.

 

[Anderis]

31 career wins but a B sprinter even in his peak.

Define what you consider a B sprinter.

He beat Cavendish in a straight fight a couple of times during Cav's peak and was his closest competitor in some important races and I would say was definetely a top3 sprinter in the world during his short-timed peak. I'm sure he would've added at least one more TdF stage if he didn't injure himself during the 2010 Tour.
But yeah, his peak lasted only one year basically and during that year he crashed and injured himseld during the Tour so his palmares don't reflect how good he was during that short period of time. I wonder if it was Weylandt's death that destabilized him mentally or were there other factors involved in his decline.

 

[Bolder]

dang forgetting our man Papi Horner like that. Levi Leipheimer without the clinical would have been the most successful in my opinion post LA.

If talking riders started after I think it is between him or Andrew Talansky (who most rated higher than TVG). Both are young only being 32 and only raced 12 and 8 seasons respectively.
TVG 28 wins. TdF Young Rider and 1 GdI stage win. Tour of California and 2x USA Pro Cycling Challenge winner. 2x 5Tdf and 10 VaE. 13 top 10's with 4 podiums in major week stage races.
Andrew Talansky 8 wins. Criterium du Dauphine. 10 Tdf 5 VaE and 7 VaE. 6 top 10's with 3 podiums in major week stage races. National TT Champion.
I guess if you like sprinters you could argue Tyler Farrar. 2 GdI, 1 TdF, and 3 VaE stages. 2x Vattenfall Cyclassics and 1x Scheldeprijs. 31 career wins but a B sprinter even in his peak.

Taylor Phinney or Adrien Costa without the accident or focused on cycling could have been more successful.

I rated him and Talansky about equal but Tejay had more wins.

Farrar was a very good sprinter but as noted he had a very short peak.

I thought Phinney was going to be a real star but I'm guessing that, accident or not, he probably would have walked away from the sport before he was forced out. Costa seemed on the cusp of great things but it's just as likely that he'd have been a Dombrowski.

 

[Red Rick]

There's Papi Horner and nobody else that was a greater US rider in the last decade.

 

[SHAD0W93]

Define what you consider a B sprinter.

He beat Cavendish in a straight fight a couple of times during Cav's peak and I would say was definetely a top3 sprinter in the world during his short-timed peak. I'm sure he would've added at least one more TdF stage if he didn't injure himself during the 2010 Tour.
But yeah, his peak lasted only one year basically and during that year he crashed and injured himseld during the Tour so his palmares don't reflect how good he was during that short period of time. I wonder if it was Weylandt's death that destabilized him mentally or were there other factors involved in his decline.

Cavendish and Greipel were the A sprinter at the time with Petacchi a A-. Farrar was 4th best on his day. He and everyone else was B or less. Without Cav he would have won more but same with Greipel and Petacchi plus the other sprinters.
He beat Cav at the Vuelta though Cav was out of form and overweight during the Vuelta though Farrar did ride in all 3 GTs that year. The other time was Cav being boxed in on the Tour stage he won. Petacchi from 08-retirement has the same amount of wins as Tyler Farrar does during his career, same amount of GT stages plus a points classification. That's not top 3 sprinter.
Weylandt's crash could be a cause but he also won his only Tour stage. He just started crashing A LOT, which maybe could be the mental from Weylandt but there was other sprinters rising up.

 

[Leinster]

I think the LA comparison says all you need to know about the pressure on any American entering the WT ranks. There’s this shadow hanging over every Yank who lands in Europe with a cycling contract, you either win as much as Lance or Greg, or you “never fulfilled your potential” (translation; “you didn’t work hard enough.”)

I think TJ is just one or 2 results away from “he had an excellent career,” and if his TdF gc results had come about in reverse order, people would hold him up as a role model.

I will say, Tyler Hamilton’s status as the only American monument winner is one of the odder outliers in cycling, and if I had the ear of a teenager about to try his luck on 2 wheels, I’d be tempted to steer them in that direction, rather than trying for 3 weeks.

 

[SHAD0W93]

Though Farrar is killing the post cycling career.

Firefighter Farrar: From one dream job to another

'I never wanted the fame of professional cycling' says American

www.cyclingnews.com

 

[jmdirt]

Cavendish and Greipel were the A sprinter at the time with Petacchi a A-. Farrar was 4th best on his day. He and everyone else was B or less. Without Cav he would have won more but same with Greipel and Petacchi plus the other sprinters.
He beat Cav at the Vuelta though Cav was out of form and overweight during the Vuelta though Farrar did ride in all 3 GTs that year. The other time was Cav being boxed in on the Tour stage he won. Petacchi from 08-retirement has the same amount of wins as Tyler Farrar does during his career, same amount of GT stages plus a points classification. That's not top 3 sprinter.
Weylandt's crash could be a cause but he also won his only Tour stage. He just started crashing A LOT, which maybe could be the mental from Weylandt but there was other sprinters rising up.

You're confusing me with all of the A, B, 3, 4 : "He's B, not top 3...", plus I don't agree with the system of the winners are A (or is it 1), and everyone else is B.

TF was a top sprinter in/on his day. Being the 3rd best sprinter in a race is A (see how I did that?) especially when you win one here or there.

Sh*t Tejay, sorry to hijack your thread! Enjoy your post racing life!

 

[SHAD0W93]

You're confusing me with all of the A, B, 3, 4 : "He's B, not top 3...", plus I don't agree with the system of the winners are A (or is it 1), and everyone else is B.

TF was a top sprinter in/on his day. Being the 3rd best sprinter in a race is A (see how I did that?) especially when you win one here or there.

That’s fair.
I think he was the 4th best sprinter in that era though not significantly better than the other sprinters. Cav, Greipel, and Petacchi were better than him.

 

[Cookster15]

Not surprised by this news, it was imminent. Had a very solid career. I put Tejay above Horner who can only be discussed in the other place.

 

[IndianCyclist]

i think the lower weight strategy of EF went all wrong for a lot of riders in EF. For some lower weight means lower power/weight like Fuglsang., EF probably insists on some lower weight. A lot of their riders have ended up burnt out like this. Just because it worked with Wiggins. I think he had the talent to win a GT definately podium but his utter focus on TDF meant he has no GT on his palmares.

 

[SHAD0W93]

i think the lower weight strategy of EF went all wrong for a lot of riders in EF. For some lower weight means lower power/weight like Fuglsang., EF probably insists on some lower weight. A lot of their riders have ended up burnt out like this. Just because it worked with Wiggins. I think he had the talent to win a GT definately podium but his utter focus on TDF meant he has no GT on his palmares.

2017 or whatever year that was when he was riding very well before getting sick was a gut puncher for sure.

 

[Mayomaniac]

I rated him and Talansky about equal but Tejay had more wins.

Farrar was a very good sprinter but as noted he had a very short peak.

I thought Phinney was going to be a real star but I'm guessing that, accident or not, he probably would have walked away from the sport before he was forced out. Costa seemed on the cusp of great things but it's just as likely that he'd have been a Dombrowski.

I prefered Talansky (one hell of a descender), but I don't know if he had a better career, it was pretty close between those 2. JV always said that Talansky wasn't the most talented guy, but a super hard worker and at one point he just lost his love for the sport.
TJVG seemed to be a nice guy off the bike, I wish him all the best.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I think the LA comparison says all you need to know about the pressure on any American entering the WT ranks. There’s this shadow hanging over every Yank who lands in Europe with a cycling contract, you either win as much as Lance or Greg, or you “never fulfilled your potential” (translation; “you didn’t work hard enough.”)

I think TJ is just one or 2 results away from “he had an excellent career,” and if his TdF gc results had come about in reverse order, people would hold him up as a role model.

I will say, Tyler Hamilton’s status as the only American monument winner is one of the odder outliers in cycling, and if I had the ear of a teenager about to try his luck on 2 wheels, I’d be tempted to steer them in that direction, rather than trying for 3 weeks.

There's also the issue that Lance's lasting legacy even before it all came crashing down was to reinforce the belief in the American audience that the sport is the Tour de France, like every race that isn't the Tour de France is a calendar built around preparing for the Tour de France. Now, the Tour has always been disproportionately important in comparison to other races, and in non-traditional cycling countries its value has always been inflated compared to other races - after all, it's the one bike race everybody has heard of, much as people who know nothing about AOWR recognise the value of the Indy 500 or people who know nothing about sailing have heard of the Americas Cup - but often a non-traditional nation following its stars will find the calendar becones demystified to them as they follow their stars.

Because of the high value inherent in the Tour especially, GC riders are always the most valuable in countries where cycling is not a major sport, because their exploits can be more readily understood by the casual fan. This leads to a lot of those placement riders, for whom an anonymous 9th place never being picked up on camera is more valuable than a stage win and 25th place. Tejay actually showed some reasonably good puncheur skills in his early career, with Rabobank Continental and then with HTC, but he long since sacrificed these at the altar of GC contention. But I would actually argue that Tejay, in the time that he came around at least, maximised his Grand Tour potential. Unfortunately for him, his skillset lent itself primarily to tempo grinding climbs - until that Rettenbachferner win quite late on, all his wins were either on home soil, on more consistent ascents constructed later and with more modern machinery, or in races like Catalunya which have a lot of longer, smoother climbs than are characteristic elsewhere in Spain. He was a good TTer and a diesel climber who happened to come along at an era when the Vuelta was becoming dramatically biased away from time trials and towards steep and inconsistent garage ramps, and with his being the most prominent US stage racer of his generation and riding predominantly on US-based teams, he often found himself deployed in California rather than the Giro. Had he come around in the early 2000s, I'd have said he stood a good chance of winning a Vuelta, especially on a route like, say, 2001, 2003 or 2007, when the big climbs were things like Arcalis, Abantos, Cambasque and so on, but coming along in the early 2010s, he was best suited to the Tour de France - and he was never going to get a situation where no rider better than him turned up at the Tour de France, because it is the one race - the only race - where literally nobody has any thought of using it for preparation.

Oh, and Red Rick, you forgot Mara Abbott, Evelyn Stevens, Megan Guarnier and Coryn Rivera

 

[Leinster]

i think the lower weight strategy of EF went all wrong for a lot of riders in EF. For some lower weight means lower power/weight like Fuglsang., EF probably insists on some lower weight. A lot of their riders have ended up burnt out like this. Just because it worked with Wiggins. I think he had the talent to win a GT definately podium but his utter focus on TDF meant he has no GT on his palmares.

He hasn’t focused on Tour GC since 2016. He even rode Giro/Vuelta in 2017. If the chance for a GT podium was there for him, he would’ve taken it.

EF are a weird team, and what they do works for some, and not for others. But TJ’s results in his last 2 years with BMC were already trending down, before he joined EF, so I wouldn’t put all the “blame” there.

 

[Mayomaniac]

i think the lower weight strategy of EF went all wrong for a lot of riders in EF. For some lower weight means lower power/weight like Fuglsang., EF probably insists on some lower weight. A lot of their riders have ended up burnt out like this. Just because it worked with Wiggins. I think he had the talent to win a GT definately podium but his utter focus on TDF meant he has no GT on his palmares.

I remember seeing their team at the TOTA in 2017, between Rolland, Dombrowski and Carthy they were all scary thin, Formolo was still the most normal looking guy among their climbers/gc riders.

 

[Sciatic]

Farrar also gets a few extra points for an American winning a TDF stage on the 4th of July I was in France at the time (and went to see a subsequent stage finish at Mur-de-Bretagne) and the French papers all made a big deal about him winning on the 4th, but when reporters asked Tyler about it after the stage, he said I didn’t even register for him that it was the 4th. Which makes sense because I’m sure for the riders during a GT , their mental calendars are like, “today is Stage 3, Olonne-sur-Met to Redon, 198 km, flat,” rather than a specific date.

 

[RedheadDane]

Farrar also gets a few extra points for an American winning a TDF stage on the 4th of July I was in France at the time (and went to see a subsequent stage finish at Mur-de-Bretagne) and the French papers all made a big deal about him winning on the 4th, but when reporters asked Tyler about it after the stage, he said I didn’t even register for him that it was the 4th. Which makes sense because I’m sure for the riders during a GT , their mental calendars are like, “today is Stage 3, Olonne-sur-Met to Redon, 198 km, flat,” rather than a specific date.

And towards the end of the race they might even lose track of where they are.

 

[Sciatic]

And towards the end of the race they might even lose track of where they are.

Indeed!