2009 Tour De France: Garmin vs Columbia

CEBU, Philippines - They are America’s team in the Tour de France. Yet, working far from home, they’re not friends.

Two months ago, just before the start of the Giro d’Italia, COLUMBIA’s super sprinter Mark Cavendish said that GARMIN’s narrow focus on the team time trial was disrespectful to the Giro. What Cavendish meant was that the Giro is three weeks and you just can’t concentrate on one stage. Well, to stir up the pot some more, GARMIN lost to COLUMBIA!

Today, they’re at it agin.

COLUMBIA’s George Hincapie, the only rider who rode with Lance Armstrong’s seven winning Tour’s, was on a breakaway and was the virtual yellow jersey on the road when for no obvious reason, GARMIN went to the front and chased hard. When asked after the race for the reason, director sportif Jonathan Vaughters, said that they were doing it to protect their two riders in the overall from crashing and from losing time like what happened yesterday.

In the end, Hincapie, a rider favorite in the peloton, came to within 6 seconds to grab the yellow jersey. Bob Stapleton, COLUMBIA’s team owner, was livid. He even said that he’ll talk directly with Doug Ellis, GARMIN owner, bypassing Vaughters, about the problem. So what was the problem really?

Well, it’s all about pogi points for their sponsors. You see, after Lance, Hincapie is the next well known rider in the US. If he gets to wear yellow, you can expect Hincapie’s name (and COLUMBIA, of course) on the headlines of all US media outlets. And what Stapleton meant to say was that with Hincapie in yellow, both teams can get the PR result they want. The estimated PR value of COLUMBIA in last year’s Tour was estimated at $150 million, and they didn’t even get to sniff yellow.

Six seconds will be as close as Hincapie can get the chance to get the yellow jersey though, with the high mountains on the menu tonight. However, I think that GARMIN had all the right to chase anyone, COLUMBIA included. It may be bad manners or bad blood but this is the biggest cycling event in the universe and you don’t give gifts. Gifts are for Christmas and birthdays and GARMIN was in no mood to hand over one today to COLUMBIA.

WORD OF THE DAY: MUSETTE is the small lunch bags that the riders get from team support personnel at feed zones in the race. Musettes contains anything from bananas, panini’s, sandwich, chocolate bars, water or energy drink. – THE FREEMAN