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The Trek-Livestrong U23 team tunes up in Austin
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Imagine you're 18, 19, or 20-some-odd years old. You’re one of the your nation’s best young cycling talents at a time when top professionals are scrambling to find teams, taking major pay cuts, or simply calling it quits.
Then, one day, late in the season, you get a call from the son of the world’s greatest cyclist, ever. It’s Axel Merckx, a year post-retirement from his own formidable pro career. He wants to know if you’ll be on his new team.
Well, it’s not actually his team, he explains, it really belongs to Lance Armstrong. Oh, and Armstrong has hand-picked a protégé for the team, a possible successor to his throne. It’s an 18-year old who took seventh in the Olympic pursuit, and won a Junior World Time Trial Championship only months after fully committing himself to bike racing. You might have heard of him, he’s the offspring of a Tour de France stage-winning father and an Olympic gold medalist mom, Taylor Phinney.
You’ll get top-flight product and support from the title sponsor, Trek, and you’ll be representing the Livestrong brand as part of the Lance Armstrong Foundation’s Global Cancer Initiative. What do you say?
“Wow,” said Cody Campbell, an 18-year old track and road racer from the suburbs of Vancouver, about getting that call from Merckx, who recently relocated to British Columbia himself.
"I couldn’t believe it,” said Bjorn Selander, a 20-year old junior national cyclocross champ from Wisconsin, who also has a family with a professional cycling lineage.
“My phone number? Why would Axel Merckx want my phone number?” said Guy East, who raced exclusively with the Under-23 National Team in 2008, and in the few months since receiving an initial e-mail from Merckx has become the favored target of the big Belgian’s playful directing style.
While he’d initially talked with Rock Racing about directing, Merckx said when Armstrong called in September about the Trek-Livestrong team, he jumped at the opportunity.
“Being a director is something I’ve always wanted to do and working with younger cyclists is something I feel I’ll be especially good at,” Merckx said at the Trek-Livestrong training camp this past weekend in Austin, Texas. “My goal is to help the guys as much as possible, and to try and keep the team as fun as possible.”
“We started this team with the idea of helping Taylor, but we have 10 guys of equal strength,” said Merckx of the group he handpicked, along with input from the under-23 National Team director Noel Dejonckheere, Phinney, and Merckx’s various other connections stretching across the globe.
Although Trek-Livestrong has a UCI Continental license, allowing for the possibility of bigger races, Merckx said he hasn’t set an official racing schedule for the year or pinned certain riders as designated leaders.
“We’re going to see what’s happening at the races. We’re lucky because we don’t have any pressure from a sponsor who wants to see their jersey coming across the finish line first,” Merckx said.
“The components of Lance’s comeback, besides his own desire to race, are to spread the Foundation’s message around the world, and develop young riders. This team is designed to both recreate the experience Lance had racing on the national team alongside riders like Bobby Julich and Chann McCrae in the early nineties, and function as an extension of the Global Cancer Initiative,” said Bart Knaggs of Capital Sports & Entertainment, which will manage the team in the same manner it managed the former Discovery Channel team.
“When we put this team together, we wanted a group of guys that would have fun training and traveling together. But we also wanted an international component. That’s why we have riders from Japan and New Zealand, and a race schedule that will include events in Europe, Central America, and other parts of the world, in addition to the domestic events,” Knaggs said.
The Trek-Livestrong team will hold a more regimented training camp in Santa Rosa, California, at the end of February, and start racing at the Vuelta Mexico Telmex in early March. The riders will also split time competing in track and road events for their respective national teams.
Taylor Phinney (18) U.S.
Cody Campbell (18) Canada
Bjorn Selander (20) U.S.
Guy East (21) U.S.
Ryan Baumann (21) U.S.
Taylor Kuphaldt (18) U.S.
Benjamin King (19) U.S.
Jesse Sergent (20) New Zealand
Sam Bewley (21) New Zealand
Ryohei Komori (20) Japan.
In Austin, the Trek-Livestrong team’s schedule included official team business such as dispersing equipment, bike fitting, physiological testing, media training, and visiting the LAF offices. However, the team made plenty of time for bonding activities as well.
They took to the bowling alley at the University of Texas, watched The Wrestler at downtown Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse movie theater, and spent an evening sleuthing out an 18-and-up dance club in the infamous Sixth Street district.
Of course, the team also put in some base miles on the country roads surrounding Austin. On Sunday’s 60-mile ride north of town, Phinney and the other team members sung the praises of their new bikes, which were assembled at Armstrong’s shop, Mellow Johnny’s. The custom painted Trek Madones are outfitted with Bontrager and SRAM Red componentry, Bontrager wheels with PowerTap 2.4 SL rear hubs, and Speedplay pedals. Each rider will get a training bike and a race bike.
With the gear, support, and guidance in place, the riders can simply focus on gaining top level racing experience and promoting the Lance Armstrong Foundation’s cause. Not that they’ll have any problem imagining that.
