Last December when we talked to Jonathan Vaughters, he reminded us that Slipstream had never yet won a stage of the Tour de France. The conversation went something like this:
PdC: That was my next question — how do you anticipate balancing your sprinters' ambitions, since you have two guys that are on fire, with your GC ambitions.
JV: With Christian Vande Velde or Ryder, it's not so difficult. You think of the Tour, are they strong in the team time trial? Absolutely. They're both pretty big, strong guys. They're guys I can send to the front with 10k to go to help with lead-out. They're GC riders, but they're not Carlos Sastre.
PdC: [laughing] I want to see Sastre do the lead-out! Man, that'd be awesome.
JV: The balance is really easy there. But for instance, you look at Christophe Le Mevel or Dan Martin, it's a bit tricky. Can I ask those guys to go pull on the front for 20k? Mmm...
PdC: They're climber dudes! That wouldn't be very nice.
JV: So we want to have a guy, maybe two, up in the higher end of the GC, but we're pretty focused on winning stages. I'll remind you guys, Slipstream Sports has never won a stage of the Tour de France. So first things first.
Today, Garmin-Cervélo announced their roster for this year's Tour. This led some of us to chatter over on the Twitter about who among the nine might deliver that elusive stage victory. Me, I'm thinking they win from the break (Sorry, Tyler) and either Ryder Hesjedal or Ramunas Navardauskas get the big win. What say you?
I feel like this should be some kind of a contest, but I don't really have any shwag to give away. So, no prize for you! Just bragging rights? Which is maybe okay too?