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Horner in Georgia: “I’m here to win”
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Defending Dodge Tour de Georgia champion Chris Horner made a bold pre-race press conference statement Monday when he announced he would not be content with anything less than overall victory.
“My form is very good,” said Horner, who is fresh off an overall win at the Sea Otter Classic to add to his stage race wins at Redlands, Pomona Valley and just about every other domestic stage race he has chosen over the past two years. “I’ve got the legs and I’m here to win. Anything less and I won’t be satisfied.”
It’s not the first time Horner has predicted victory. Last September, on the eve of the T-Mobile International, Horner, 32, told VeloNews he would win the race or “put on one hell of a show.” The former Saturn rider then did just that, bridging a 1:30 gap in the final laps to beat an international field that earlier in the day had included five-time Tour winner Lance Armstrong.
Considering the international field the Tour de Georgia has drawn — primarily CSC’s Bobby Julich and Jens Voigt, and U.S. Postal Service-Berry Floor’s Armstrong, George Hincapie and Viatcheslav Ekimov — Horner’s recent comments will soon enough be viewed as either rash or prophetic.
“The legs are very good,” Horner continued. “There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be up there with the race leaders. I’ve spent the last three months away from my family, training as hard as I can, and I’ve come here with as much motivation as anyone could have.”
With the attendance of international cycling superstars Armstrong and Italian Mario Cipollini, the pre-race press conferences were broken into multiple segments. The first question-and-answer session featured Julich, Horner, Sierra Nevada’s veteran time-trial specialist Eric Wohlberg, Navigators’ national time-trial champion Chris Baldwin, TIAA-CREF team director Jonathan Vaughters and Barloworld’s former South African national champion David George.
Next up was Cipollini, aided by an interpreter, and last was a fashionably late Armstrong, joined by U.S. Postal’s director sportif Johan Bruyneel.
In 2003, when a relative unknown, 7UP’s Charles Dionne, beat Armstrong at the San Francisco Grand Prix, the defending Tour champion admitted he’d never heard of the young French Canadian. Racing in the States for six days this week, Armstrong confessed he has only been following North American race results this season enough to know that Horner is the domestic racer to beat.
“I have to admit I haven’t done my homework,” Armstrong said. “I saw the results of Redlands, and a little bit from last weekend at Sea Otter. It seems to me to be Chris Horner’s show. I didn’t look beyond, seeing as most days he was winning by sizable amounts, there was really no need to look past that. I think Chris, in terms of domestic riders, will be if not the favorite then certainly one of the favorites to be at the front.”
When asked whom else he saw as potential race favorites, Armstrong was hesitant to predict himself as the winner, instead naming Julich and Voigt as well as his own teammates Hincapie and Ekimov.
“I think [CSC] will probably focus on Bobby,” Armstrong said. “I hate to say, I haven’t really looked at the start list. Ask me tomorrow.”
Armstrong went on to discuss his own team’s chances. “I think we have a strong team. We have guys who can win the race, guys like George and Eki, both guys are decent climbers who can time trial very well, so we’ll have a strong team.”
But what about his own chances? While Bruyneel claimed the Postal team is without question in Georgia to win, Armstrong explained, “I don’t think I have the condition to win here. It’s been almost three weeks since I’ve last raced. I suspect my rivals — our rivals — will have done some races more recently. It would be nice to win; it’s always nice to win, but I don’t think I have the condition to win. Maybe we can play a team card, tactically, with George or Eki. The training that I’ve done, I’ve felt very good, better than I normally would feel in April. But I’m a little insecure in talking about my chances.”
Asked if he felt pressure to win the race for his legion of American fans, Armstrong referred to his sole annual objective, the Tour de France. “I feel a lot of pressure to meet their expectations in July,” he said. “A lot.”
While Armstrong’s press time was of a slightly serious tone, Cipollini’s was, predictably, run with more flair and charisma. Before the 2002 world champion’s entrance, Vaughters warned, “Women of Georgia — beware!”
Wearing a tightly cropped T-shirt and silver chain, the tanned and mustachioed Italian answered questions through an interpreter. Posed with a similar question regarding top domestic sprinters that might be considered a threat, the 37-year-old Cipollini also admitted to a lack of knowledge about North American speedsters like Gord Fraser and Greg Henderson (Health Net) or Ivan Dominguez (Colavita Olive Oil).
“I don’t know anything about the domestic riders,” Cipollini said. “I hope not to be beaten, but I would respect any rider who can beat me.”
Asked why he’d chosen to come to Georgia for his Giro d’Italia preparation, Cipollini explained that after winning races in Europe, he wanted to add a win in the United States to his palmares. “I wanted to get away from Europe for a little while,” Cipollini said, “and I want to win in the U.S.”
For Julich, who has not raced in the U.S. in eight years, he admits an overall victory would be sweet but stressed that a team victory is the highest priority. “Of course we’d all like to win, but the most important thing is CSC winning. I just took my first win in seven years [the time-trial stage at the Tour of the Basque Country] and it was a pretty emotional day for me.”
And what if Armstrong has come to race for the win? Julich was quick to admit that should Armstrong be on form and ready to test his legs, the rest of the field would be in trouble.
“If Lance is on form in the mountains, we don’t have many options,” Julich said, to which the always good-humored Horner added, “Yeah, we do. I’ll hold him down and off the bike. You keep on riding.”
Julich then threw in his own brand of humor on the topic. “This is Lance’s world,” he said, “and we’re all just a squirrel trying to get a nut. That’s a tough question. No one’s been able to beat him in the Tour de France in the last five years, and I don’t think anyone’s going to be able to beat him this year, so if he comes here ready to play, we’re all in for some serious suffering.”
“If [Armstrong] comes here with 100 percent form and he wins the time trial and we go into the mountain stages we can switch tactics and go for the stage win,” Horner said. “To a degree we can hope some other riders put him into some kind of pressure. I’m going for the overall GC myself, but if I have to, I’ll switch to winning something versus nothing.”
Tour de Georgia pre-race notes117 riders will participate, from 23 different countriesThe race will cover 653 miles, pass through 23 cities in Georgia, and boosters predict that the race’s economic impact will exceed $20 million in tourismThe final U.S. Postal Service rider added to the team’s Tour de Georgia roster is Damon Kluck. The team’s roster is now: Lance Armstrong, George Hincapie, Viatcheslav Ekimov, Michael Creed, Antonio Cruz, Pavel Padronos, Daniel Rincon and Damon Kluck.Current national road champion Mark McCormack (Colavita Olive Oil) was not on stage for Monday night’s red-carpet team presentation dinner. We’ll try to get information on McCormack’s situation as soon as possible.When asked whether he’d chosen a stage to instigate one of his patented suicidal breakaway attempts, Landbouwkrediet-Colnago’s Jacky Durand joked, “Why not tomorrow?”Jittery Joe’s Colombian climber Cesar Grajales, second overall at Redlands, is sounding more and more like a possible KOM winner, if not a dark-horse pick for the overall. While Grajales had trouble sticking to Horner’s wheel in the mountains at Redlands, Grajales claims to have ridden the courses for the hilly stages 5 and 6 “once or twice a week” for the past several weeks.Canadian national road champion Dominique Perras will compete in Georgia for the first time with his new team, Ofoto-Lombardi Sports
