there is no "i" in "team"--who can best say that with a straight face?

by JFS_PGH on Jul 28, 2009 12:52 AM EDT

Of all the people to make the "there is no “i” in “team” comment, Lance wasn't the first to spring to my mind, or the second, for that matter. More specifically, Jens was the first, and Renshaw was the second. Use this space to give love to the rider(s) who, for you, most epitomize "team player." If that's too broad, you can limit it to the tour, or pick one guy per team, or a team that has fantastic "all for one and one for all" attitude. No rider is too obscure or too well-known (I think of some of Cancellara's mountain stage pulls, for example).

Despite my mild opening snark, I'd hope to keep this as a "white unicornish" thread--a lot of love. If you don't share someone's love (it's blind, so very blind), avert your eyes, and post a mash note of your own for another masher.

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Comments

Seeing you already said Jens!

I’ll go with evil CVV on the evil garmin team.

Vamos Alberto!!!(Contador not Ricco)

by Phil H. on Jul 28, 2009 2:30 AM EDT reply actions

no, he said "Jens", not "Jens!"

"Wizard's first rule. People are stupid. They will believe anything they want to be true or fear to be true." -- Terry Goodkind

by umwolverine on Jul 28, 2009 5:22 AM EDT up reply actions

Stéphane Goubert

Year in, year out, and no love from the masses.

Except, there’s an ‘i’ in ‘équipe’, I suppose. Perhaps he would say, ’il y a pas de “je” ’ instead?

by Drongo on Jul 28, 2009 2:31 AM EDT reply actions

Goubert.....+1

BAH!!!!....Cavendish?!

TLP 7.0 Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent

by bradBordeaux on Jul 28, 2009 5:13 AM EDT up reply actions

Good call

Makes his teammates better.

"It's just a bike race" - Frank Schleck

by Pendleton on Jul 29, 2009 12:48 AM EDT up reply actions

they're using stats like that for football & basketball now

to get away from the “I” focused stats of possession, goals / baskets, etc. Very interesting stuff.

by JFS_PGH on Jul 29, 2009 2:50 PM EDT up reply actions

Yeah, I like that stuff

Sometimes it’s misleading since correlations don’t necessarily imply causation, but it’s a better way to look at team sports.

"It's just a bike race" - Frank Schleck

by Pendleton on Jul 29, 2009 4:15 PM EDT up reply actions

George Hincapie

(at least usually and for most of his career)

sometimes life is a false flat

by Willj on Jul 28, 2009 4:00 AM EDT reply actions

+1 (but always, not just 'usually'!)

Bah... Garmin.

by cg. on Jul 28, 2009 9:55 AM EDT up reply actions

+1 (as if you didn't know)

by ZoeRochelle on Jul 28, 2009 1:26 PM EDT up reply actions

Stating the obvious, perhaps

But Bjarne’s boys are pretty much the definition of "a team that has fantastic “all for one and one for all” attitude". How The Great Bjarne does it, I really don’t know… and clearly a lot of the other DS’s don’t know, either ;-)

by Lou... on Jul 28, 2009 5:58 AM EDT reply actions

Apparently Lance can say it

http://twitter.com/lancearmstrong/status/2878615861

by spaley on Jul 28, 2009 5:58 AM EDT reply actions

that's what prompted this post, and what makes my original comment modestly snarky.

by JFS_PGH on Jul 29, 2009 2:51 PM EDT up reply actions

Sergio Paulinho

i’m really surprise with him, he was getting better day by day, very good job. If anyone has doubts of his choose for the Tour, i think he justified.

by semprenaroda on Jul 28, 2009 6:22 AM EDT reply actions

Tony Martin, Maxime Monfort, George Hincapie.

Stage 19. Supported Mark Cavendish over the Col de l’Escrinet, then still had to chase down the guys in front and then lead their guy out for the sort of win he wasn’t supposed to get. In Cav’s words (as transcribed by andrewp for the post-stage thread):

"Tell you what, that will go down as the most memorable win of my career – Ever!. It wasn’t a stage for me….you could see rabobank…..full gas. They didn’t think I could get over that….they went full gas on the climb… I said to the guys just wait with me on the climb ok…and they were all with me…they all stayed with me..and we stayed at the front….I wasn’t in much problem…it was..it was sort of painful…you know hanging there,..hanging there, .. hanging there…it was so hard.

And then "the two" got away, and we had three guys chasing you know….Maxime George and Tony..and they were still there for the lead out….and they did a K there at the end…EACH…..and then Tony took me, took me, took me…and He’s dying, dying….and 250/300 metres, on that slightly uphill finish, it’s far too early for me to go…,but I had to go before the others got the jump….and I gave it everything,…everything for the line you know,….and you know..after the disappointment of the last few weeks…it just made up for it…that was amazing, that was so so amazing. I’m so happy, so so happy."

Great work by all of them. In later interviews Cav amended “greatest win ever” to “greatest Tour win ever,” but I think it’s going to go down as a formative moment. Now he knows he can win, even late in the Tour, the kind of hard stage that virtually nobody expected would end in a sprint. But it took truly heroic efforts from his teammates to get him there.

Throughout the stage all I kept on thinking was: ‘don’t finish second, you can’t finish second again’.--Heinrich Haussler

by majope on Jul 28, 2009 7:31 AM EDT reply actions

Oh, and George did it with a broken collarbone.

Today on Twitter:

Got some bad news this am. X ray confirmed my collar bone is broken.

Happened on July 22, so he finished that stage and rode 4 more—including the one reference above—with the break. Another one for the HTFU Hall of Fame.

Throughout the stage all I kept on thinking was: ‘don’t finish second, you can’t finish second again’.--Heinrich Haussler

by majope on Jul 28, 2009 8:11 AM EDT up reply actions

Add to that his massive turn

on the cobblestones in Paris for the final stage win. It hurts me just to think about it.

by Katiek on Jul 28, 2009 10:12 AM EDT up reply actions

Yup, Hincapie=unbelievable

I just wish he could get a few more results for himself.

by tgartner on Jul 28, 2009 4:10 PM EDT up reply actions

well he doesn't get the glory

but he does get a ton of respect from everyone

by yeehoo on Jul 28, 2009 4:58 PM EDT up reply actions

thought so. No other reason to refuse to have it X-rayed.

If you’re determined to ride, minimize your official injuries.

by JFS_PGH on Jul 29, 2009 2:55 PM EDT up reply actions

lovely recreation of the moment, too,

and thanks to andrewp for transcribing, and to you for reposting.

by JFS_PGH on Jul 29, 2009 2:53 PM EDT up reply actions

Leipheimer

his recent application to the Mean Girls club notwithstanding.

by Sui Juris on Jul 28, 2009 8:24 AM EDT reply actions

+1

by ZoeRochelle on Jul 28, 2009 1:28 PM EDT up reply actions

Johan Van Summeren

Always one of the top domestiques and who can forget him waiting for Hoste when Leif crashed during Paris-Roubaix.

by mysterion on Jul 28, 2009 8:25 AM EDT reply actions

This is a clever topic idea, I like!

Errrm riders who always sacrifice themselves, well I think you used my obvious choice, Renshaw.

This Tour I thought Chris Anker Sorensen was great, he looked like he was in all kinds of pain to keep a good pace for the Schlecks and he sacrificed going in breaks etc to help them

"When he accelerates, he's like Superman emerging from the telephone booth!" La Gazzetta journo Paolo Condo talking about Edvald Boasson Hagen.

by Helsy33 on Jul 28, 2009 9:14 AM EDT reply actions

Agree about Sorensen

He did the same at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and did it brilliantly.

by Jen See on Jul 28, 2009 12:38 PM EDT up reply actions

Agreed

Saxo has 16 podiums in the 49 races Sorensen has done this year, but only 6 podiums in the 62 he hasn’t.

"It's just a bike race" - Frank Schleck

by Pendleton on Jul 28, 2009 1:11 PM EDT up reply actions

good point--and good eye--and good stats to track that down.

by JFS_PGH on Jul 29, 2009 2:56 PM EDT up reply actions

Nah

Good stats would be to say the chance of that happening randomly is 1 in 370. ;)

"It's just a bike race" - Frank Schleck

by Pendleton on Jul 29, 2009 4:12 PM EDT up reply actions

Don't worry, Renshaw deserves double praise, no doubt.

by JFS_PGH on Jul 29, 2009 2:56 PM EDT up reply actions

Vanderflecha

In turn, one day of the year, the team rides for him.

by tedvdw on Jul 28, 2009 10:23 AM EDT reply actions

hmmmm... great thread and question

1. CVV pharmacy
2. Big Boy George
3. 501 Jeans

Wow, now that I look at it, the above sure looks like a hot dog and apple pie USA homerism list.

Oh well, it wasn’t my intention, but maybe I need some self-reflection time to deal with my obvious insularity?

by IowaAC on Jul 28, 2009 10:43 AM EDT reply actions

[grin]

everyone’s a bit of a “homer”—no problem with that—does help to know / notice it.

by JFS_PGH on Jul 29, 2009 2:59 PM EDT up reply actions

Gregory Rast

despite all the Astana ugliness he was very impressive

by ZoeRochelle on Jul 28, 2009 1:33 PM EDT reply actions

+1

Linebacker on a Bike

by Jens on Jul 28, 2009 1:55 PM EDT up reply actions

what do people think of Haussler

in this regard? I’m too ignorant to say myself.

by yeehoo on Jul 28, 2009 5:00 PM EDT reply actions

That's really hard to say

He hasn’t been in very many situations to be selfless really. Sastre was never much of a GC threat. I saw him doing some work for Thor, but Cervelo as a team was usually burned up by the time the peloton got to the 1K mark. Certainly everything I’ve heard him say reflects well on his willingness to help, I’m just not sure he knows how to be most effective and/or has had a whole lot of opportunities to demonstrate his selflessness.

"I had a cameraman filming me on the back of a bike, I rode up to him and
said: 'hey, this is a pretty shitty situation, why don't you just leave me alone with my misery? I was close to punching him off his bike … but I didn't, of course."" Jens!

by jsallee00 on Jul 28, 2009 6:29 PM EDT up reply actions

There was a slight problem with Haussler's ambitions before the Tour.

He was quoted in cyclingnews in June as saying he wanted to go for sprints and the green jersey. I’m guessing someone pulled him aside and pointed out there was a senior sprinter on the team, because within a day or two came back and corrected himself, saying what a great rider Thor is and how he’d have no problem working for him.

Don’t know how much work he ended up doing for Thor in the end—in his blog on CN he mentioned he and Thor lost each other in one sprint, and he crashed in another and couldn’t rejoin before the finish. But there’s a lot of day to day team stuff we don’t always see—protecting the lead rider, carrying bottles, leading him up to the front, etc.

I hope he gets to work for himself soon, though. I think he’d be a tough competitor for the green.

Throughout the stage all I kept on thinking was: ‘don’t finish second, you can’t finish second again’.--Heinrich Haussler

by majope on Jul 28, 2009 7:54 PM EDT up reply actions

Nice thread, I just found it.

Let me add to the Jens! love, and here’s hoping his poor jaw heals quickly.

And a quick mention to my favorite selfless riders: Michael Barry, Chechu Rubiera, Markus Burghardt, & (I agree with others above) all of SaxoBank, really. Giovnni Lombardi. Marco Pinotti.

by Ruthann on Jul 31, 2009 10:19 AM EDT reply actions