Sunday’s News Today: Vande Velde Wins Tour of Missouri!
What year-long coming out party it has been for the former hyper-domestique Christian Vande Velde, who – now keep this a secret, please – just WON the Tour of Missouri by CRUSHING the individual time trial.
Being a real-time or sooner news service, we felt it unnecessary to wait until they make this all official on Sunday.
Anyway, for years, Vande Velde, now riding for Garmin-Chipotle, has been this powerful, faithful, reliable racer who could set pace, pull the peloton, lead the team up the Alps, or take on whatever mission he was needed for.
But then it seems something happened to him when Jonathan Vaughters brought him onboard this get-big-fast organization he was trying to take to the big leagues. It seems Vaughters told Vande Velde that he was capable of actually winning the races he’d been working so hard at in the past — and Christian seemed to take him at his word.
Roll the clock forward, and we’ve seen him in the Pink Jersey in the Tour of Italy, then we saw him in Yellow in the Tour de France (and finishing with an honorable mention in the General Classification) after giving everybody else huge pains in both the time trials and mountain stages — and now he’s used his much-improved time trialing to rip the legs off all the other pretenders at the Tour of Missouri.
Today, Vande Velde rode the 18 mile mostly-uphill course in Branson, Missouri in thirty nine minutes and fifty two seconds, besting Michael Rogers (Team Columbia) by a full twenty seconds, and Svein Tuft (Symmetrics Cycling Team) by 33 seconds. Notoriously strong time-trialer and past winner of the Tour of Missouri, George Hincapie (Team Columbia) finished fourth at more than a minute slower than Vande Velde, as did Dave Zabriskie (Garmin-Chipotle), who came in fifth on the day.
Anyone who has seen the Branson time trial course knows it is surprisingly grueling. The course starts in downtown Branson’s tony new Landing (as in boat landing) area, and works its way uphill to finish at a hilltop observation point approximately 10 miles from the start.
The riders’ work begins almost from the time they roll clear of the starting ramp, as they begin the ascending. Then, just when they’ve about got the observation tower in sight, the route kicks up for a steep and steady final two and a half mile climb.
Last year’s winner on the same course was arguably the world’s fastest climber, Alberto Contador.
This year, Vande Velde beat by a substantial margin a Who’s Who list of speedy climbers to capture first place on the day.
Today’s ITT began at 11 am CT on a beautiful morning with a temperature of 64 fahrenheit at the start-time under cloudless blue skies, and of course the riders went off in reverse order of their GC standing.
By a few minutes past 1pm CT, Vande Velde had finished his ride and had already posted the best split times on the course, and then the best finishing time. For the next forty minutes the remaining riders completed their race, but nobody came close to threatening to beating Vande Velde’s result.
As a result of his powerful ITT performance today, Vande Velde sits in the number one position in the GC, with just under nine hours total time. Rogers, Tuft, Hincapie and Vincenzo Nabali (Liquigas) occupy the number 2 through 5 positions in the GC, in that order. The US has five riders in the top 10 positions.
The remaining stages of the Tour of Missouri are relatively long “rolleurs.” The finishes will favor sprinters (which, by the way, should be called “Cavendishers” henceforth), but nothing about the course should put Vande Velde’s overall lead in jeopardy.
General classification after stage 3
1 Christian Vande Velde (USA) Team Garmin-Chipotle p/b H30 8.48.24
2 Michael Rogers (Aus) Team Columbia 0.21
3 Svein Tuft (Can) Symmetrics Cycling Team 0.44
4 George Hincapie (USA) Team Columbia 1.03
5 Vincenzo Nibali (Ita) Liquigas 1.15
6 David Zabriskie (USA) Team Garmin-Chipotle p/b H30 1.21
7 Darren Lill (RSA) BMC Racing Team 1.22
8 Thomas Danielson (USA) Team Garmin-Chipotle p/b H30 1.24
9 Danny Pate (USA) Team Garmin-Chipotle p/b H30
10 Ben Day (Aus) Toyota – United Pro Cycling Team 1.25
Categories: Events, Hub, News, Race Results, Races, System6, Tour de France, USA Cycling
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Hey, Ladies Only
Sep 18th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
[...] course, as we’d proactively and omnisciently reported four days earlier (see: http://www.bicycle.net/2008/sundays-news-today-vande-velde-wins-tour-of-missouri), American-cycling’s man of 2008, Christian Vande Velde (Garmin-Chipotle), stayed atop the [...]