Every year I look forward to seeing Garmin's roster for the Tour de France; there are certain cyclists on the team that I like and would like to see there, other cyclists who don't impress me much and I wonder why in the hell is he riding. I was surprised when two of the cyclists I like, Zabriskie and Farrar, were benched this year. I was even more surprised to see they were sending Crash Vande Velde. Most of the world knows him as Christian, me, I like to think of him as Crash. He crashes a lot. If you check him out in Wikipedia you'll see that in the past three years he's had to withdraw from the three major races because he'd injured himself in a crash. He started the tour this year but... had to withdraw because he crashed... twice I believe. One can only wonder why Garmin didn't have a statistician in the room when they were deciding on this year's roster. The question should not have been "is he going to crash," but "when is he going to crash."
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| Vande Velde - just looking for a place to crash |
One of the redemptive bright spots of this year's roster has been Andrew Talansky. For a first timer on the tour he's doing really well. Someone made a smart decision. In fact, if you look at the overall General Classification, Garmin's top three riders are all in the mid-twenties. Their older riders just aren't doing to well, and Crash Vande Velde? He's out.
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