Home > News

Ryder Hesjedal part of three-pronged attack for Cannondale-Garmin at Tour de France

June 29, 2015
Share on SMS

Cannondale-Garmin released their Tour de France roster Monday and also revealed a new jersey for the Grand Tour. The American WorldTour squad will be looking to place high in the GC and hunt stage wins. Either Cannondale or Garmin-Sharp/Garmin-Cervelo has had stage victories in the past four editions of the race.

Canadian Ryder Hesjedal is back in the Tour after a year’s absence and will hope to race with the form he had in May at the Giro when his relentless attacking in the final week vaulted him to fifth place, tying his second best Grand Tour result from the 2010 Tour.

Cannondale-Garmin will go with the three-pronged GC attack that was the strategy of last season’s Tour, but with Irishman Dan Martin joining Hesjedal and USA time trial champion Andrew Talansky instead of Janier Acevedo (Colombia). Martin recently placed seventh in the Critérium du Dauphiné, where 2014 champion Talansky was 10th. The Irishman will look to thrive in the Tour’s difficult first week of cobbles, crosswinds, and Classics-like stages.

With an eye on Stage 9’s team time trial, Cannondale has included some big engines in the lineup, like Lithuanian chrono champion and Tour stage winner Ramunas Navardauskas, Dutchmen Sebastian Langeveld and Dylan Van Baarle, Slovenian Kristijan Koren, Kiwi Jack Bauer and Aussie Nathan Haas.

Like LottoNL-Jumbo and Tinkoff-Saxo, Cannondale has gone with a new kit for this La Grande Boucle, not with a mind to minimize the yellow, but to lighten the jersey. The new kit has taken the green trim and made it the dominant colour, with light blue in the argyle, collar and cuffs. There’s far less black. Perhaps the change was made so as not to be mistaken for French wildcard team Bretagne-Séché Environnement’s, whose uniforms are very similar to Cannondale’s regular kit.

Categories: News |