If there's a revolution going on at Team BMC, you wouldn't know it from talking to Jim Ochowicz. "I don’t really look at this year as any different.," he tells me from his team camp in Valencia, Spain, as the team boards the bus for another mild winter workout. "Every year is a challenge for every team, regardless of your roster. You have certain expectations, certain goals that you’re all trying to accomplish as a group. You know, they’re professional athletes, we’re professional managers and coaches. This year is the biggest year in our campaign thus far with BMC, so there’s a few more challenges laid in front of us than in other years, but I believe we’re ready and it’s going to be an interesting season."

Aha! So this is a big year for the team! All about the fan/media landscape we chat of a Superteam being assembled on Ochowicz's watch, a team that boasts the reigning Tour de France winner, the guy who swept the Ardennes classics, the previous three world champions, two guys with Paris-Roubaix podiums, winners left and right, the two hottest young American talents... pretty much everything a team manager could want.

But except for that minor admission, Ochowicz is keeping it real. How? Why? Join us on the flip as we break down the classics and the new squad...

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It’s become a tradition, if doing something twice qualifies as a tradition. When Ted King comes to town, I meet him for coffee and we talk bike racing. And whatever else happens to come to mind.

A week or so ago, King sent me a message that he would be in town. We immediately got down to the all-important business of planning coffee. Training is important. Coffee is vital.

Join me below the fold for a story about drinking coffee with Ted King.

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This Tuesday, the Giro d'Italia will announce its wildcard selections for the 2012 running of the Corsa Rosa, and in Germany Ralph Denk will be waiting by the phone (email? Twitter feed? anyway...) like a political candidate waiting for the election returns. A lot is riding on the outcome of that call, the one where Team NetApp finds out if the Giro is on their calendar for this year or not. It's not pro forma, the news could be good or bad. The team doesn't look like a classic Giro squad (re: heavily Italian) but they can deliver some aggressive riding and a slew of German media coverage, both of which would benefit the race. The team is entering its fourth season, about when ambitious projects can expect to start moving up. So there is a chance.

Either way, Germany's top-ranked pro team is getting ready for a season in which they hope to turn some heads. The lack of a German team in the World Tour provides a narrative for the team and Denk, their manager, the kind of big narrative which could (and would have to) help lure in bigger sponsors interested in plugging that gap. But this kind of crusade doesn't quite describe Team NetApp itself, a squad with more nationalities represented on their roster (8) than Germans (6). Instead, they are a mostly young group, where 26-year-old American Steven Cozza is considered one of the veterans. A majority were born in 1987 or later, making those guys no older than 10 when Jan Ullrich won the Tour de France. This is a new team, a fresh start, and a team hoping to start writing its story in bold letters.

I communicated with Denk by email this week about the Giro, the team's direction, and German cycling. As much as is possible to tell, Denk strikes me as the right kind of person for this project -- very upbeat. Maybe behind the scenes he's cracking the whip on his young charges, or asking some of the team's veterans like Markus Eichler and Andre Schulze to kick their asses in training, but with me Denk sounded brimming with optimism and excitement about the coming season...

PdC: You will hear from the Giro d'Italia next week about invitations to the 2012 race. What qualities does Team NetApp offer that you think the Giro would find attractive?

Ralph Denk: Team NetApp is a young team. We develop talents with great ambitions. The Giro would bring our young talents to another level. Last year we proved that we are able to finish tours as the Tour of Turkey, Tour of Austria, Tour of Poland or Tour of Britain among the Top Ten or even on the podium. [Ed: Leopold König finished 2nd in the Tour of Austria.] Now the squad is ready to take on larger tasks.

Team NetApp will enrich the Giro with active racing. We proved our style of racing with initiating the key escape group at Paris – Roubaix as well as with four awards as the "most active rider" at the Tour de Suisse and Tour of California. When being in a big race Team NetApp is always fighting and competitive. In the end we do hope that the Giro commission will also consider both our global sponsor and even more important our German roots. After announcing our aim to compete at the Giro d’Italia, more than 250 German media covered that story – just within four days. So it might be the right time to point a new way for German cycling.

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Janel Holcomb won the points race on the U.S. circuit this year when she won the National Racing Calendar individual prize. In fact, Holcomb and her Colavita-Forno d’Asolo won both the individual and team prizes in the NRC. For Holcomb, the victory came as a surprise. Certainly, she did not start the season with the NRC prize in mind. "I came to Colavita planning to be the ultimate team member. I was just honored to be on the team," Holcomb told Podium Cafe in a recent interview. "I definitely didn’t think about the NRC."

Holcomb, a former runner, is a bundle of energy, and with her Colavita-Forno d’Asolo team-mates, she rode the season with an attacking style. An ensemble cast, the team had no single leader, and used their strength in numbers to win throughout the year. Colavita-Forno d’Asolo frequently placed two or even three riders in the top ten and quietly accumulated the points necessary to win their second-straight team NRC prize. For Holcomb, the race for points came down to the final stage of the Cascade Classic. In characteristic style, Holcomb and her team-mates went on the attack and Holcomb won her title from a breakaway. It was a storybook ending for Holcomb and for her Colavita-Forno d’Asolo team, which will not continue next season.

Pull up a chair, my friends, and join me for a chat with Janel Holcomb, the 2011 NRC champion and former high school chemistry teacher.

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Amanda Miller is fresh off a season with the top level HTC-Highroad women’s team. The 25-year-old American spent the past year racing in Europe and the United States alongside elite riders like Amber Neben, Judith Arndt, and Ina-Yoko Teutenberg.

With the dissolution of the Highroad teams, Miller will change directions slightly next year and ride for Team Tibco. Miller started her professional career with the U.S.-based team, and is looking forward to returning there. At Tibco, she will have the opportunity to ride some of the U.S. races like Tour of Gila and the Cascade Classic that she missed during her year with HTC-Highroad and where she will have a shot at racing as the team’s leader.

Miller will also head to Europe with Tibco for the spring classics, and she hopes to join the U.S. national team for a trip to Europe in the fall.

Last week, I had the chance to chat with Miller. We talked about what it was like to race with the experienced women at HTC-Highroad. Miller also explained why she is excited to return to Tibco next season. And, she had some helpful tips on how to show cattle.

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Last week we reviewed the book Team 7-Eleven: How an Unsung Band of American Cyclists Took On the World -- And Won, the definitive take on the breakthrough American team of the 1980s. In the midst of Interbike, I had a chance to bust in on a team reunion at a swanky Vegas restaurant, where I was invited to sit down and chat with lead author Geoff Drake and 7-Eleven manager Jim Ochowicz (who also collaborated extensively on the book). Thankfully we were on the balcony, or my recording would be even worse than it was. But the time spent chatting was well worth it. Let's get into it...

A Team On the Move

One of the more remarkable elements of Team 7-Eleven's rise was how quickly it took place. On arriving in Europe, their first stop was the Trofeo Laigueglia, a late winter race in Liguria, Italy. Which 7-Eleven's Ron Kiefel promptly won from a breakaway, owing to both his strength and the team's anonymity. From there they got invited to the Giro (two more stage wins), and a year later the Tour de France. Teams have long come to Europe from far off to try their luck, but there was something different about a team from the USA, with all the bigness and media potential that suggested.

PdC: How much of a role did the curiosity of the Europeans play in speeding things along?

Jim Ochowicz: Oh, real quick --

PdC: You know, today, if you start a new team and say "our goal is to get to the Tour" --

Och (can I call you Och?): Yawner --

PdC: -- you have to get in line --

Och: Big yawner. Everyone says that, right? The good thing we did was, we didn’t go in there saying we want to be in the Tour de France. We just said we wanted to go to Europe and race. We didn’t say we wanted to do the Giro, the Tour, Paris-Roubaix -- we didn’t know what Paris-Roubaix was. We had no idea. We just want to go to Europe and race. What does that mean? Let’s go and find out.

So we went there and we found out that we were not so bad, we were pretty competitive. We got to the Giro and actually won two stages -- then we started going, what’s next? What do you do after the Giro? Well, some teams go to the Tour de France. OK, let’s go see what the Tour de France is. So we explored that. We didn’t know -- we knew what the Tour de France was, but we didn’t really know, what does it mean in terms of commitment and organization, how do you get in, how do you get invited, how do you get to the start. All of those things were just a blur in front of us. But every time we made a progression, the blur stopped. We weren’t blurred about the Giro after we did the Giro. Next race, same thing. Every time we made it through an episode, we had a clear vision of what we could do with that.

Keep going...

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Amy Dombroski of Crankbrothers Race Club finished second behind a flying Katerina Nash of Luna Chix at Wednesday night’s Cross Vegas. Nash and her team-mate Georgia Gould attacked the race early in the game and together held off a strong chase group including Dombroski, Kelli Emmett of Giant Bicycles, and Meredith Miller of CalGiant Strawberries. Gould faded in the final lap, while Nash powered away for the solo victory. Dombroski finished twelve seconds behind the winning Luna rider.

When we last chatted with Amy Dombroski, she was fresh off the icy 2010 Tabor World Championship and racing for Luna. Fast forward to now, and the Vermont native has a new team for this season, Crankbrothers Race Club, and a new bike sponsor, Ibis. A rough summer riddled with crashes and health problems left Dombroski uncertain about the coming season. "We had a lot of questions, my fitness was terrible this summer and I had no results. Is this really going to work?" The good result on Wednesday definitely helped her confidence. "Crank Brothers has been awesome and I felt some pressure on my shoulders for this race, because they were sponsoring the women’s race. I was able to ride well and I’m very happy!"

Cross was not always Dombroski’s favorite thing. She started out racing road and was not immediately enamored of the barricades and the run-ups that give cross its distinctive, and crazed, character. "When I started cyclocross, this sport’s retarded, I hate it, it makes me cry, it makes me frustrated. This is asinine!" she said of her encounter with the sport. "I was just like, I like to ride my bike, not jump off of it." Now, she jumps off the bike with the best of them, and has an U23 national title to prove it.

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Marianne Vos is cycling’s woman for all seasons. She races year-round and wins on all terrains. "Everything is Vos territory," quipped Ina-Yoko Teutenberg recently. And rightly so. Vos, who races for Nederland Bloeit, has won World Championship titles on the road, on the track, and in the mud and snow of cyclocross.

At 24 years old, Vos has seven World Championship titles. She has won Flèche Wallonne a record four times. And for the first time this season, Vos showed that she can match the very best riders in the high mountains when she won the Giro Donne.

Vos is a happy warrior. She plainly loves the bike and thrives on competition. "That’s the biggest motivation: To get better, to make yourself a more complete rider," said Vos when I talked to her last week. She was getting ready to head to the Trophée d’Or in France and this weekend’s World Cup race in Plouay. "It’s fun to make these races," she said.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Vos talked about her victory at the Giro Donne and what it was like to battle Garmin-Cervélo’s Emma Pooley through the high mountains of Italy. She also shared her impressions of the Olympic road race course, which she recently previewed. Vos explained her views on the importance of out-of-competition testing, and she promised that the best is yet to come in her already wildly successful career.

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