Cannondale-Garmin, The Young Team That Wants To Go From Last To First

Cannondale-Garmin’s team may be under pressure after claiming only 2 wins so far this season.

Cannondale-Garmin seems to have trouble keeping up in this season’s cycling races. The team has so far only managed to win 2 races. On top of that, the team’s journey has been riddled with incidents and accidents. Take for example, Andrew Talansky who had to bow out out of the Tour of California before the halfway point of stage 1 on Sunday due to allergies and an upper respiratory infection.

And as they are down on the luck, it is no wonder that they have been placed last in the World Tour standings. With 827 points ahead, leader Etixx-Quick-Step is way ahead of Cannondale-Garmin. However it doesnt mean that the team’s luck won’t change, as can a gambler’s luck when he plays bingo on online italiano, for the Giro d’Italia race.

Crashes curb Cannondale-Garmin humor

According to Charly Wegelius, sport director of Cannondale-Garmin, “When you look at the spring, not very many teams won a lot. I think there are a lot of teams in the same position, and it’s very early to draw any conclusions. The morale is high, everyone is going about their work, and everyone is excited about the coming races.”

The team rides into the season’s first major tour expecting to impress cycling fans who bet on sports in Italy and hopes to do better. But so far with crashes involving main faves Sebastian Langeveld and Daniel Martin, at both Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, it’s hard to keep a smile on the faces of Cannondale-Garmin team members.

Wegelius takes long view

The two victories that they have so far managed to get from the European tours so far are thanks to Ramunas Navardauskas at the Circuit de la Sarthe, and Ben King, at Critérium International on Corsica. Dylan Van Baarle could only nab 3rd place at Dwars door Vlaanderen. While during World Tour races, Volta a Catalunya and Vuelta al País Vasco, Martin came 3rd in stage 3 and Tom Danielson too, in stage 5, respectively.

Wegelius though remains calm saying “When I was 21, Etixx-Quick Step manager, Patrick Lefevere told me, ‘Panic is a bad adviser.’ And that is very true. Beyond the story of the points, there are a lot of good things happening. The development of young riders has gone very well. The fusion of two groups has gone very well. These kinds of things are going to bear fruit later on.”

Cannondale-Garmin is a very young team

One of the reason why the team may not be fully ready for a World Tour race, is because as a team they are still in the baby stage. It was only during the winter that Cannondale-Garmin team was born, when Garmin merged with Cannondale, the now defunct Italian team. Before that Garmin had teamed up with Cervélo.

Yet some promising young cyclists and a few mature team members make up the 8 Garmin cyclists. They include Italians, Davide Formolo, Alan Marangoni and Davide Villella, who seem to very open. All three are racing in the Giro for the Cannondale-Garmin first grand tour of the season.

Danielson, Tom-Jelte Slagter, and Javier Acevedo free to bike in breakaways

Wegelius said the team’s boss Jonathan Vaughters “did a good job planning the winter, and the time we spent together, to get that gelling together over the winter”. Of the Italian riders he said that “I heard two Italians talking English among themselves, because they are taking a big effort to learn English. They’re young kids, and they’re taking it as a positive learning experience. They’ve also brought some positive things, with the traditions of Italian cycling. It’s going to leave a net gain for the whole organization.”

The team thinks in the long run they will pull through and move up notches in the eyes of their fans who are betting on them to wager and win under Italian gambling laws as well as in the books of World Tour standings. Joe Dombrowski, Alex Howes, and Ben King are participating in The Amgen Tour of California, While 2012 champ Ryder Hesjedal, will carry the lead at the Giro D’Italia.

Will Wegelius’ team win the Pink Jersey?

Wegelius said“Ryder is here to race, to race for pink. That is the intention at the start. There are other opportunities for riders like Danielson, Slagter, and others. There are a lot of interesting stages, when the sprinters won’t make it, so who’s going to ride? There will be some chances,”. “To win? There is a way to do it, and that is to take chances. That suits us just fine. Let the favorites look at each other.”

Wegelius knows that in the cycling world that to move up the ladder they will have to win a lot more races. They hope to produce good results in the Tour de California, the Giro D’Italia and of course the Tour de France. As a rule, cyclists tend to be ambitious, but with so many hungry bikers elbowing for a place on the podium, winning could end up being only a distant memory.