With such Tour de France veterans as Magnus Bäckstedt, Julian Dean, David Millar, Christian Vande Velde and Dave Zabriskie on its 2008 roster, Slipstream-Chipotle appears to be a certain starter at next year’s Tour — taking over the role as “the American team” previously played by Discovery Channel, U.S. Postal, Motorola and 7-Eleven. At the Tour presentation in Paris last month, both Slipstream’s American team manager Jonathan Vaughters and Danish directeur sportif Johnny Weltz were confident of performing well.

“My first big wish is of course to get the invitation to the race,” said Weltz, “so once we get in there, I think it suits us very well. What’s in mind is that we have a team that’s based in Colorado at high altitude. We’re used to the high mountains, and with some great time-trial guys on for next year, we should have good opportunities.”

Will this route suit the boys in argyle? Vaughters seems to think so.

Photo: ASO

Vaughters agreed, telling VeloNews, “The first thing I noticed [about the 2008Tour route] is that you’ve got three stages and then a 29K TT, which reminds me of the years that Zabriskie and Dave Millar won what was a longer time trial right off the bat, and not a 6K to 8K Cancellara-type power prologue. So for our team, an ideal tactic is to help the sprinters’ teams keep things together [on the first three stages], and then hope that either Zabriskie or Millar can win that first time trial. That’d be a heck of a way to start your first Tour, with the yellow jersey.”

Weltz was just as enthusiastic, saying, “I think it’s great because you don’t start off with a prologue, so you don’t block the race; and not having time bonifications you keep the race open far into the race, almost to the last few days. I think we’ll have a great, great show every day all the way through.”

Vaughters agreed that the 2008 Tour should be more open. “My general impression of the race is that they’ve really tried to make a non-formulaic attackers’ race,” he said. “The really hard stuff isn’t until right at the end. In the Limousin region and through the Massif Central there’s a lot of these middle-mountain breakaway-prone stages, but not necessarily pure strike stages.

Zabriskie made the jup from CSC

Photo: Agence France Presse - 2007

“Obviously the two Italian stages, especially the one going up to nearly 3000 meters [the Restefond on stage 16], that’ll be something entirely new. Normally you never go close to that altitude in the Tour.”

Weltz agreed, saying, “Nobody knows really how they act when they go that high in altitude. That stage could have a big impact. I think one of these stages at the end will eliminate a big part of the pack, because on a short stage with two mountains, somebody is not going to make it.”

One rider that Slipstream management hopes is going to make it, at least on that giant mountain stage, is American climber Tom Danielson, who’ll be riding his first Tour. Vaughters said, “I don’t know if he’s ever going to be a GC rider, but on a day like that, if there’s a stage he could win in the Tour de France, that would be it.”

Weltz, the man most responsible for Slipstream choosing Gerona in northeast Spain for its European base, said, “Danielson has been around Gerona for a long time and I know he’s a strong guy. I think it’ll be good to have an American environment around him, and the whole team set up in Gerona, I think it’ll give him more accountability in his performance, so we don’t have these peaks up and down and get some more steady, solid results from him. He’s a grown-up boy now … and we can develop him as a team leader.”

Should Danielson prove that he can come strong in the final week, as he did at the 2006 Vuelta a España, then he could gain a high GC finish — especially if his time-trial ability continues to improve. In any case, Weltz sees the 53km time trial the day before the finish as critical.

“I think you build up a lot of tension all the way through the race,” he said, “so I think that the last days, especially with a long time trial like that, are going to be really interesting.”

Vaughters concurred, saying, “Yeah, it seems like it’s good for a team like ours that has no real solid leader but will be able to play a bunch of different cards. As I said, it seems to be set up to be a non-formulaic race, and that’s good for us because that’s always been our racing style. Even though that wasn’t my style as a rider at all, somehow my team ended up that way.”

Weltz concluded, “In the whole run-up to the Tour we’re going to have a lot of opportunities to bring the team together and we will have eliminated all the small issues that can happen, so once we hit the Tour we’ll have a great, great group that can be [competitive] in every single stage.”