From the magazine: Worlds Collide – the Garmin-Cervélo merger and intrasquad dynamics
- By Neal Rogers
- Published Jul. 6, 2011
Editor’s note: The following article appeared in the March 2011 issue of VeloNews magazine. We thought our web readers would enjoy a look at the what the Garmin-Cervélo team said about team cooperation before the season really started.
Garmin and Cervélo merged to form a pro cycling super team — but how will the intrasquad dynamics play out?
In 2011, the world road champion will be a lead-out man.
That got your attention? Good. Because while it might be a gross exaggeration to claim that Thor Hushovd will be relegated to second fiddle as a new member of the Garmin-Cervélo team, of all the developments to occur during pro cycling’s 2010 silly season, the merger of the Garmin and Cervélo squads was by far the most significant.
When the Canadian bike brand was no longer able to shoulder the cost of sponsoring the two-year-old Cervélo TestTeam, team management struck a deal with Garmin, announced August 27 during the Vuelta a España, that found homes for seven of its contracted riders. The new, top-heavy Garmin-Cervélo squad instantly became one of pro cycling’s only super teams, a fact punctuated with an exclamation point when Hushovd took the world championships on October 3, bringing the rainbow jersey to a team known for its argyle flair.
Questions arose immediately following the merger announcement, particularly around the pairing of Hushovd, a two-time green jersey winner and one of the most consistent sprinters of the last decade, with world number-two sprinter Tyler Farrar, the man Mark Cavendish loathes to cite as his biggest threat in the final 150 meters of any race. The questions around sprint dynamics within the new team only intensified when factoring in Heinrich Haussler, runner-up in 2009 at both Milan-San Remo and the Tour of Flanders.
In the days after the announcement Garmin manager Jonathan Vaughters, who rode alongside Hushovd at Crédit Agricole from 2000 to 2002, clarified the roles his two biggest stars would play, telling VeloNews, “Thor and Tyler are different types of sprinters. Thor can survive hearty mountain stages, and he excels on hard, uphill finishes; Tyler is really fast. I think they are very compatible. If Thor were six or seven years younger, like when he was quick sprinter, it might be different. But now he’s really strong, he time trials well, and he’s proven at one-day races that are 260km long, and with climbs. Tyler is pure speed. I think they complement each other, rather than supplement each other.”
As for Haussler, his 2011 forecast is uncertain after losing much of the 2010 season to a knee injury that required surgery. “Heinrich is on a bit of a comeback year,” Vaughters said. “He wants to come in the season hot, and he is probably our best guy for the Tour of Flanders. But first we have to make sure he is back to full form.”
So when races are too long, too hilly or just too hard for Farrar, Hushovd will have free rein to make the final group and sprint for the win. Otherwise, the world champ will be an integral component of what is possibly the sport’s most stacked lead-out train, consisting of riders like David Millar, Brett Lancaster, Murilo Fischer, Julian Dean and Farrar — with Haussler playing the wildcard.
Add to that list of strongmen Cervélo riders Roger Hammond and Andreas Klier, a pair of podium finishers at Gent-Wevelgem, and Johan Van Summeren and Martijn Maaskant, a pair of Paris-Roubaix top-10 finishers, and, on paper, Garmin-Cervélo boasts the deepest classics team in the world. Fabian Cancellara and Tom Boonen may be the sport’s strongest classics riders, but Garmin-Cervélo jerseys could outnumber Leopard-Trek or Quick Step in the final 50km by a ratio of three-to-one.
However a team’s strength on paper and what happens on the road can be two very different situations, and a perfect marriage between the two squads is no guarantee. The riders that came over from Cervélo learned about their team’s collapse in late August, via email, after the fact — not the recipe for an ideal transfer. And the North American riders that have been part of the team since it entered the sport’s top level in 2008 saw longtime teammates Danny Pate, Steven Cozza and Timmy Duggan cast aside to make room for the heart of Cervélo’s established classics squad.
In order to accelerate a sense of harmony among his all-star squad, Vaughters organized a team-bonding camp in early December, held at a posh beachside resort on Grand Cayman Island. The weeklong gathering consisted of a week of outdoor island adventure, with the team swimming with stingrays one day and scuba diving the next, playing golf and volleyball, taking helicopter rides and a trip on a submarine and participating in a scavenger hunt — all shared experiences intended to forge friendships and allegiances between former rivals.
“If there’s only a small turnover, say four or five guys, you can just integrate a group like that into a team. But when you have two large, closely knit groups, it’s different,” Farrar said in Grand Cayman. “At Garmin we’ve been a closely knit group, and I’m sure it was the same at Cervélo. You can’t just snap your fingers and have guys become friends — at least not the kind of friendships that we’ve built racing together for three years. But this gets the process started in a fun setting.”
Klier, a smart-but-serious German entering his 14th year as a pro, said the camp had been a success, but added that blending the best of two squads into one super squad was still a work in progress.
“It’s too soon to say if it will work out or not,” Klier said. “We had a nice time in the Cayman Islands, but it’s too early to say this will be, without problems, the best team ever. But I think everything will come good.”
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Neal Rogers
An interest in all things rock 'n' roll led Neal into music journalism while attending UC Santa Cruz. After several post-grad years spent waiting tables, surfing and mountain biking, Neal moved to San Francisco, working stints as a bike messenger and at a software start-up. He moved to Colorado in 2001, taking an editorial internship at VeloNews. He never left, and is now Velo's editor in chief. When not traveling the world covering races, Neal can be found riding his bike, skiing, cooking, or attending a concert. Follow him on Twitter at @nealrogers.