HTC-Columbia Plans for the Future
The team which took five stage wins this year at the hands of Mark Cavendish had a bittersweet Tour. HTC-Columbia also took four second places after Cavendish’s firsts, but found their Tour otherwise plagued with loss and disappointment. Team manager Bob Stapleton is planning on losing the bitter and keeping the sweet in time for next year’s race.
The American-based team saw the loss of rider Adam Hansen, one of over twenty contenders to drop out of the Tour due to a crash, and also lost Cavendish’s best lead-out man, Mark Renshaw, the only rider to be forcibly kicked out of the Tour.
"We had to use our resources differently without Hansen and Renshaw,” said Stapleton to Cyclingnews. “We couldn't put nine guys on the front. We thought we could win five stages, that we had a chance for seven and the maximum feasible was nine. We've had four seconds but you can never count on that."
The goals of HTC-Columbia in the Tour were to put Cavendish in the green and Michael Rogers in the yellow. Tony Martin also aimed high in the general classification, but Rogers and Martin both faltered, finishing in 37th and 137th, respectively. For Martin, who finished 2nd in the prologue and held 2nd place overall after stage 1, this was a huge disappointment, but the 25 year-old contender has plenty of time to improve.
"It's always a difficult thing to balance, having a team with goals in the sprints and green jersey and for the GC,” said Rogers.
After the fourth stage, Rogers was already two minutes behind, a surprising disappointment after having one of the best seasons of his career. He stood inside the top-20 for most of the race, but ultimately fell into the 30s in the heat of the Pyrenees stages, and finished the Tour over an hour behind Contador.
"He was super good all season so I think it's a special case,” said Stapleton. “I think it says he can’t be good for seven straight months. He'd really changed his training and approach but it was really a case of too good too soon."
Cavendish had been losing faith in his ability to contend for the green jersey. However, Cavendish’s fortunes turned when he took two stage wins in a row and the humbled sprinter shed tears on the podium.
"We never had a loss of confidence in Mark," said Stapleton. "We knew he could do it but we also knew that we had to change our game-plan because some teams had come in with a tactic designed to derail our train. We needed to adapt and we did. It's worked pretty well."
This comeback followed announcements by the Tour press that Cavendish has lost it and someone had to step up to fill the void. The other leading sprinters were interviewed about their chances in light of the Brit’s falling out, but Cavendish went on to win five sprint stages, breaking the record for both the most sprint wins in a Tour and the most career Tour de France sprint wins ever with 15, three more than the previous record.
"Mark's got that talent that people overlooked the last year and a half because they've been so used to seeing that train,” said Stapleton. “The real deal is that Mark has the talent and tactical knowledge and ability."
The team lost a number of high profile riders after the 2009 season, including George Hincapie and Edvald Boasson Hagen, who both rode in the Tour this year, bringing in a number of up-and-coming young cyclists in their place. The changes for the 2011 season will target the weaknesses they’ve seen in the Tour de France and aim to improve the team’s general classification competitiveness.
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