schmalz We haven’t talked in a while…we haven’t talked since the Giro, so a lot of things have gone on since then with you. That might be an understatement right there. So, pink jersey, top five in the Tour, and the Olympics, too, so… I’ve got some questions about the Olympics, actually. You went to Sydney, right?

VDV Yes, I did.

schmalz You were part of the track team there?

VDV Yeah.

schmalz How were the two Olympics different, as far as your experience went?

VDV Oh, man, it was pretty night and day different. In Sydney, I really went there, I felt horrible, I had health issues with a spider bite in the Tour de France that year, I had an infection and all that. I didn’t feel great, I wasn’t on top of my game. I came from the road and tried to just jump on the track and do well there, so I kinda felt like a fish out of water. It was September, 14th or 15th I want to say, it was a pretty long season, so I was pretty smoked by that time. I went there trying to do well, but knowing I wasn’t going to be competitive. Whereas this year I was on top of my game, but at the same time after a long season it was hard to keep it together, but it was a fun crew with George, Jason, Dave, Levi and myself. We really really had a good time. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed that hard for a week straight, maybe never in our lives. It was a good time.

schmalz Did you guys all stay together in the Olympic village?

VDV Yeah, it was a three room suite that all teams had, depending on how big the teams were, so we shared a room together. We were pretty much together 24/7 there, it was a good time.

schmalz That’s funny, it was like a little taste of college, did you go back and hang out for a while?

VDV Yeah, it was like college without alcohol, you know? It was probably a good thing it was a dry campus, at that point in the season. We had a great time, and there’s not much to do, but there was a lot of people watching, and I was just glad that everyone had a great sense of humor.

schmalz Did you take part in the opening ceremony?

VDV No, the opening was the night before the race. This was George’s fifth and he still hasn’t been to an opening nor closing ceremony. Par for the course I guess.

schmalz Did they send you the outfit anyway for the opening ceremony?

VDV You get the whole kit and caboodle, if you’re going or not going, it’s a ridiculous amount of clothes, and I don’t think anyone wears all the clothes, you give it away to friends and family, it’s pretty cool, keepsakes… George actually left his clothes in the closet, he just left it. I just grabbed it and gave it to my father in law as a Halloween costume.

schmalz That’s hilarious, your father in law’s going to be sporting the red white and blue Ralph Lauren suit?

VDV Yeah, he looks like he’s going boating.

schmalz Yeah, with the jaunty pork pie hat.

VDV Exactly, man.

schmalz That’s a nice touch, he’ll be able to get around in that.

VDV (laughs)

schmalz So, what did you think about the team selection? Did you think it was fair? Would you change anything?

VDV I really wouldn’t change anything, because the way things turned out for the road race both David, Jason did a great job chasing really hard. We had our pants down and missed that break in the beginning, and at the end it didn’t matter since those guys were all cooked for the most part in that breakaway and it wouldn’t have done us any good to have anyone in there. Anyway, Jason more or less brought that break back by himself, Dave did all the flats before that, so, I think we did as good as we could. Levi and I were there in the final, and we did miss that little bit to be in the front selection. First and 25th were separated by only 45 seconds, first and 20th…I could see Samuel Sanchez winning…I was within fifty meters at one point in time, you know, so it was a great race. I was happy with the result, not the result, but the way it went.

schmalz Spain was just stacked this year. Were you guys even concerned about Sanchez? Or were you watching Valverde a little closer?

VDV Valverde, and um… Bettini

They were like George and I during the national championships on Sunday. They were the guys everyone was looking at, but at the same time they had other strong riders go up the road. They were like the decoys, hanging back, a lot of guys had their pants down watching them.

schmalz Sure. You had a strong team at the Olympics. It was just that one move that you missed and that was it…

VDV I could have thrown my water bottle up that move at the top of that hill, that’s how close it was. And I was almost…I bridged up on the downhill, and…there was a lot of coulda shoulda woulda’s, there was a lot of tactics…it was a highway all the way down from the top of the hill to the finish, you really wanted to conserve, you didn’t want to have your pants down at the top of the hill and miss the boat, so it was…it would’ve paid to be a tad more aggressive, but at the time, Andy Shleck, was by far the strongest rider in the race, 4th place…

schmalz As it was ticking down you felt bad for Andy, ’cause there was just no hope for him.

VDV No, there’s no doubt about that. But just watching him the whole race and up that last climb, he was just unbelievable, you know. The end of that race, was a little bit more for sprinters, you know. We thought it was a really hard course, people are scared of it, and they don’t race as aggressively in the beginning laps.

schmalz I was talking to Frankie Andreu about this, and he was saying during the Olympics that sometimes some of the guys from different countries are just completely out of their depth, there might be some guys from smaller countries, it’s just them and, you know, what are they going to do? Because they have a little less experience than you have.

VDV Yeah, the biggest thing apart from guys from Iraq or this and that country that maybe aren’t known for cycling, the depth of a five man team is kinda strange also. That throws a completely new dynamic into things, when you only have so many bullets before you go straight to your protected guy. That makes it completely different from the Tour de France or another World Cup where there are nine teammates.

schmalz So, at the Giro, how did you choose the team? How did you choose who was going to go over the line and get the pink jersey?

VDV We didn’t want to screw up the whole day by picking someone and trying to get him over the line first and miss out on winning the whole race by 3/10ths of a second or something, just because we’re trying to have Dave or myself or whoever first across the line, we thought that would be pretty stupid.

schmalz So it just worked out that way that you crossed at that time?

VDV Yeah, you know, we were really going…we took all the time back on the last quarter of the race, and we were going really fast, and I got better and better throughout the end of the race, and I happened to go…I think I started to pull with 800 meters to go and there’s a corner with 300 meters left, so I just went the whole last…

schmalz You’re not fooling me, you know you sprinted!

VDV Oh, of course I sprinted for the line! Everyone’s sprinting behind you, you know? Zabriskie said he could’ve come past me but he didn’t want to do the press conference.

schmalz I think you saw the pink jersey at the line and you just took off a little bit. You can admit it, don’t be afraid. Anybody would. No problem.

VDV I thought about being in that pink jersey for a long time beforehand, it was a cool. I was really happy it worked out that way, it set my mind, it changed a lot of things in my mentality for the rest of the year.

schmalz Well, you had a season where you went to the Giro, you were planning the Giro and the Tour this year?

VDV Mmmhmmm.

schmalz You probably weren’t planning, before you went to the Giro, to be the leader for the Tour. So you probably had a strange sort of, peak set up for the season. Usually you don’t become the leader for the Giro and the Tour in one year. ‘Cause it’s…tiring.

VDV Yeah, I’m always better my second grand tour. I realized in the last four years, so that was part of the plan, where we just have a supposedly training camp Giro, where we don’t put too much pressure on. We try to race good, as a team, but not put a massive amount of emphasis on every day, being up there… You have a bad day, they realize, just go to the back. Almost do like the Italians do at the Tour de France, you know, opposite.

schmalz Sure.

VDV We went through it with that mindset, and I think we underestimated how hard the Giro was, it was unbelievably hard. The hardest part of the Giro was the training camp afterwards. Going straight from Milan to St. Moritz, no going home, no passing Go, straight to a hotel in St. Moritz. That was hard, not going home.

schmalz Well you wouldn’t want to do anything that would apply pressure, like…winning the pink jersey…

VDV Yeah, that was pressure. And then I was in second place by one second for four days I think, and that was horrible. That gave me more desire to realize that when you get a little success then you want more. Seeing Pellizotti in front of me every day, and it probably wasn’t even a whole second he had on me, it was horrible, excruciating to watch, getting the pink jersey, being the champion every day, that really fired me up, got me excited for the rest of the year I think.

schmalz And I would think Pellizotti’s hair is just mesmerizing in person.

VDV (laughs) It is! Everything about him, you know, he looks great on the bike, he’s got this crazy looking nose, facial features, and this hair…he’s a different looking dude. That’s a perfect word, mesmerizing, just different. You wouldn’t see a guy like that walking around in the ‘burbs.

schmalz Exactly.

VDV Maybe Jersey, you’d see someone walking around like that.

schmalz You see a lotta that in Jersey. It’s very common.

VDV (laughs) His name might be Franco, too, huh?

schmalz Exactly, his name would be Franco. It might be Franco, it might be Cosmo, could be even more Italian than Franco, so… Are you getting ready for next year’s Tour right now? Is it already stuck in your mind?

VDV You know, I was, after the Tour, I was just completely revved up, because it was just right there, and especially in the last time trial, getting better and better, and..maybe not getting better, maybe getting more confident, and thinking of myself as a different rider. Putting more pressure on myself to perform, I might’ve been just good in the first time trial where I was eighth, the second one I got fourth, really close to third, so…anyway, I think it was more mentality. Immediately thinking of ’09 Tour de France the second I crossed the finish line at the second to last stage, the time trial.

schmalz You never broke into old domestique mode out of habit, you never went for bottle for anyone?

VDV No no no, I really didn’t do that. I went back one time, bringing my own stuff back, and Whitey yelled at me, stay at the front…I didn’t have much of a problem not going back and getting bottles.

schmalz Is this the first Tour where you’ve been really healthy? ‘Cause you’ve had your spider bites, other things happened to you…

VDV My first Tour, I had a great Tour. Even there, I had a little tendinitis, ’cause I was undeveloped, my body was still undeveloped, I was 23 years old and put a lot of pressure on it. But from start to finish, yeah, I crashed, that little crash wasn’t that bad at all. But apart from that, I was healthy from start to finish.

schmalz And you know what, they show that team time trial crash over and over, like the guy that fell on the opening of the Wide World of Sports, they just show you crashing all the time. Do you just cringe when you see that?

VDV Oh yeah. I just try to blank that out. That whole Tour, in all honesty. That was the second time I crashed, then I crashed again and broke my arm. That was horrible. Yeah. That was a horrible week and a half in France for me.

schmalz You don’t want to be the answer to the trivia question ‘Who almost crashed out Postal in the Tour that year’, right?

VDV Exactly.

schmalz And we have to bring up Stage 16, two and a half minutes, man. Two and a half minutes!

VDV I lost more time on the downhill than I did on the uphill.

schmalz That sucks.

VDV That hurts, man. You do the math pretty quick, and it’s pretty easy to see where it ends up. But, it happens, you know, and everyone has a bad day. And that wasn’t a good day for me to have a bad day, but, you know. Any other day and it wouldn’t have been as big a deal. Even if it ended on top of that climb, I would’ve lost less time. But it was a crash, and a pretty technical downhill, and I kinda lost my nerve for a little while and lost even more time. That was hard to take, really hard to take. But I was really happy that I bounced back the next day and had my wits about me and did a great Alpe d’Huez.

schmalz We lost the coverage of you on the mountain so we didn’t see what happened. Do you remember what happened exactly?

VDV I know exactly what happened. I was gassed, you know, I was completely above my limit, I was just trying to make time on the downhill, and through a switchback, I just washed out, trying to take it too tight, jumping out of the saddle before I was squared back up. Just a pretty stupid mistake, easy to make mistake but something that I almost never do. But when you’re that kinda panicked, not panicked, but above your limit from the climb and really trying to make up everything on the downhill, these things happen.

schmalz So you were probably more gassed on the descent than you were on the climb.

VDV Yeah. It’s all mental, especially when you go that hard. And it was really high altitude, it was over 2,000 meters, so you’re having less oxygen to get to your brain, you know, so… I mean, I went so deep on that climb, just trying to stay close, and anyway, that’s what happened, man.

schmalz Now that was the day after a rest day, correct?

VDV Yeah, that was a day after a rest day, and I think that was another thing where you learn what you can and can’t do. I have to ride more and be more aggressive on my rest day to stay open, just ’cause that’s my physiology.

schmalz Sure, and I read an interview with Allen Lim where he said that you went pretty short when you should’ve probably went longer. He mentioned that you might’ve ate more watermelon? Does that sound familiar?

VDV I should’ve, yeah. He has a theory for everything. (laughs)

schmalz What’s the secret to watermelon?

VDV It has nothing to do with watermelon, it has to do with how much I rode. I actually did a pretty decent ride, with a climb and everything, and I went pretty hard on the climb. I don’t know, I really thought I did everything right. Not like I just sat in bed and didn’t do anything. I really did a decent amount, but I guess I just have to do more.

schmalz Do you think it’s because you approached the rest day as you had in previous Tours when you weren’t necessarily a team leader? Was that the difference?

VDV Totally, yeah, and not being that fit, you know? I’ve never so fit in my life, where you have to do so much to stay good, you know. Where in some stages I’d be horrible for four, five hours, then in the last hour come really good. It just took me a long time. Or, I didn’t get better, I just didn’t get worse throughout the whole stage. On the stage to Prato Nevoso I was really bad, and at the end I was able to take time out of Cadel. It was weird, it was one of those things you have to keep telling yourself ‘you’re going to get better you’re going to get better’, and eventually you will.

schmalz A question about Allen Lim, because he seems to be kind of the, um, mad genius behind everything at Garmin. Especially with his cooling stuff.

VDV Yeah, Allen has great ideas. Allen has taken it to a new level with a lot of things. This year he’s really embraced cooling, cooling at night in the hotel room, cooling before time trials, cooling during the races and things like that. He really thinks that has a massive effect on human performance. And you know, for some things you really just have to believe him. Because throwing an ice vest on, before the team time trial at the Giro, that took a bit of convincing because it wasn’t exactly hot out, you know, before that time trial. I was downright cold before we got to the start line. I wore it all the way to the start line. But you know, we won, and no one ever got overheated. We really started believing more and more in his mythology. I think, Allen we call him ‘the wolf’, he’s always thinking, he’s kinda like, if you need something done, whether it be how’re we going to get the most performance…how can I phrase this in the best way…Allen’s the eldest on the team, but at the same time he’s the guy making sure you’re excited to race, happy, cooking rice and eggs in the team bus after the stage, making sure you have everything…he’s kinda like the go to guy, the guy who takes care of all the problems.

schmalz He went through with the time trial with Jonathan, Jonathan rode and he took all the information for the last time trial in the Tour. I think he had, ‘drink here’, ‘clear your voice here’, ‘scratch yourself here’, I think he had everything down to the second, didn’t he?

VDV Yeah, he did great. I thrive off that, ’cause I love organization when it’s those kind of crunch times when you take all the thinking out of it, and Allen makes it much easier to do all that kind of stuff. You know, when you’re giving 100% it’s really nice to be around people who are giving 100% also.

schmalz Sure. How long after the Tour did your joy of eating return?

VDV Man, I love to eat. My wife is an amazing chef, and she works in a great kitchen in Spain, before my baby came, so no, man, I never stop loving eating, that’s for sure.

schmalz So the chewing and all the eating at the Tour never gets to you then?

VDV No, it really doesn’t. Willy was there, our chef, luckily we don’t have horrible, I mean I did have some diet restraints this year, and I ate a ridiculous amount of rice, and I didn’t even eat bread the whole time, and I didn’t drink. That was hard for me, but whatever. Things were going good and I wasn’t going to change anything.

schmalz Wow, you usually don’t hear ‘no bread’ from cyclists. Usually most cyclists eat like a pack of locusts, they just eat whatever they can find.

VDV Yeah, we had a rice cooker on the bus, it made things quite easy. As long as you’re not starving. The problem is when you don’t have anything else. You need to eat something. If I didn’t have anything else, I would’ve eaten a whole baguette with god knows what on it, but Allen was always there, our soigneurs were always there, making sure we got something good.

schmalz During the Tour this year, it seemed that whenever you guys were on the final climb of the day, and it was the five of you, especially on Alpe d’Huez, it seemed like most times the attacks weren’t as decisive as they were in years past. You guys just looked like you were marking each other and you were exhausted on those climbs.

VDV Yeah, we were, like Alpe d’Huez, and… When Saunier Duval was still there, we were attacking hard and fast and guys could respond and Ricco could still go. And Piepoli could still go. Then when those guys changed, then it was different.

schmalz Yeah, once they got ejected from the Tour it changed the dynamic a little bit…

VDV It changed a LOT, the dynamic. We were attacking hard, man, we were going crazy fast. Especially when Andy was doing the tempo, no one could make the difference. I could go just as fast as Valverde, and Frankie could go just as fast as Cadel, and so no matter how many times you attacked, it was just more if you let anyone go for a little bit too long, then again, same thing, we would hold each other, more or less, then you start thinking, ‘I can’t do all the work, Bernard Kohl behind me is just getting a free ride’, that’s how all the breaks got established. The time splits, with Carlos up Alpe d’Huez.

schmalz When Ricco and Piepoli were jumping off the front, were you guys looking at each other like ‘how are they doing this?’

VDV Well, yeah, like, Col d’Aspin, I think, that Ricco won.

schmalz I don’t know what stage number it was, I forget.

VDV He went over the climb and then down the climb all the way to the finish and he was by himself, you know what I’m talking about?

schmalz Yeah.

VDV The bottom of that climb, whatever that was, the Col d’Aspin or something like that, we were going like 36 kph, man, up the climb. That was one time when I was like, ‘this is crazy fast’, you know? But then I’d look behind me and there was nobody behind me, and I was just following wheels. Those kind of things were crazy.

schmalz Do guys in the race get suspicious of that? Do they think something’s going on, or do you just think ‘this guy’s having a great day’, or what was the feeling amongst you guys?

VDV Y-you get suspicious, guys like Ricco. But Ricco’s always been an amazing climber, a very explosive climber. But you know, it’s different when you’re racing with every other guy, and every guy was at the same level, apart from Ricco. That makes it a little more suspicious about Ricco.

But at the same time, he’d lost a lot of time in the time trial, if Ricco would’ve smashed in the time trial, then I would’ve been ‘Whoa, something’s up here.’ But he didn’t. But he’s always been a better climber than me, I couldn’t say too much at that point in time, but then looking back and then watching, and then I didn’t see it on TV like you did. I didn’t see him coming across the line with his mouth shut and all that.

schmalz Yeah, he just took off, so…

VDV I usually try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but once you hear that Ricco did this, then you doubt EVERYONE on that team, you know. That was for the best that they left.

schmalz It seems in this day and age you’re really playing a risk taking anything. I don’t think that he knew that there was a special marker in the CERA for the detectors to find.

VDV Oh no (laughs).

schmalz So, surprise!

VDV It was great. A lot of journalists wrote bad things about it, but I look at it in a positive light. More and more people are getting caught, the system’s working.

schmalz Well, the thing is that there’s problem in other sports, but the other sports aren’t willing to take the biggest stars out on the biggest stage.

VDV Yeah, exactly.

schmalz When the Carolina Panthers played the New England Patriots, some of the Panthers tested positive for steroids after the Superbowl. So… (ed – the Panther players didn’t test positive – they received prescriptions for banned steroids weeks before the game. The NFL was not aware of the player’s actions at the time)

VDV No shit??

schmalz Yeah, and they didn’t do anything. The punter was on steroids! (Todd Sauerbrun was reported to be one of the players who filled the steroid prescriptions – ed.)

Oh my God.

schmalz They didn’t do anything! I don’t think they knew before, it came out afterwards, it wasn’t before the Superbowl, but if that were cycling they would’ve kicked all those guys right out.

VDV There wouldn’t be a Tour de France if that happened.

schmalz Yeah, it would be a mess. At least things are moving in a better direction than it was. When you were racing against Andy, Frank, and Carlos, did you feel you had an advantage because you had been teammates with those guys? Did you know what to expect from them?

VDV Yeah, I did know what to expect to a certain degree, but on the climb you can’t expect anything. On Hautacam…the biggest thing is I didn’t know what to expect of myself. I knew what to expect from them, but I didn’t know what to expect from myself. That’s my biggest regret, ’cause a lot of times I did know what to expect from them. Maybe Carlos wouldn’t chase him down, and things like that. At Hautacam I should’ve gone with Frank or at least Bernard Kohl and I might’ve taken the yellow jersey. Those are the biggest things that I learned, what to expect from myself. I know what to expect from others, ’cause I’ve been around others for a long time. Just more what I needed to start expecting from myself, the confidence that I should have in myself.

schmalz So you didn’t know Andy Shleck was weak because he won’t drink his own urine when you were on that CSC training camp out in the…

VDV Oh Andy, Andy, he’s a frickin’ Navy Seal, man.

schmalz Oh, is he?

VDV He’s the first one that would do it!

schmalz You look at him and you just don’t think ‘badass’, you know?

VDV No, I do, ’cause I know him. He’s the baddest. He’s one of the strongest minds out there, too, he doesn’t get flustered, he doesn’t get down, he has a very strong character.

schmalz The Shleck brothers, they seem like really nice kids. They’re like the Peyton and Eli Manning of the professional peloton, I guess. And is Andy going to be a concern, is everyone thinking what Andy’s going to pull off next year?

VDV Oh yeah. It’s all about Andy next year. It was all about Andy this year, but he really messed up on Hautacam, but the way he rode the rest of the race he was like a caged animal, he was sooo strong where they had to call him off quite a few times on the climbs. He got stronger and stronger and stronger. On Alpe d’Huez I don’t think he even got to threshold, and the day that I got dropped, he was the one that did all the pacesetting, and Frank had to tell him to slow down more than a few times.

schmalz Who do you think CSC was racing for? Do you think they were racing for Carlos?

VDV They were racing for whoever had the legs. At the end of the day they did the right move, because Frank did not do a good last time trial, and Carlos beat him by quite a bit, so I think they would’ve lost the Tour if they’d raced for Frank.

schmalz Because it seemed like when Carlos went on Alpe d’Huez, it seemed like it was a setup move.

VDV That’s what I thought. That was why a lot of us messed up. I thought it was a setup also. I thought Carlos was going to go, get reeled in, and then Frank and Andy were going to go. That’s kinda what was going to happen, but Carlos saw his opportunity and he went with it.

schmalz He basically won the race of CSC, I suppose.

VDV Exactly, that was what happened at CSC. You had to be the first one to be out there, just as Frank was on Hautacam. Frank got out there first, and you have your hands tied if your teammate’s up thte road.

schmalz So, are you going to be training for the Tour this winter again in Chicago?

VDV Yep.

schmalz How are you going to do that?

VDV I don’t know. I’m not going to…it’s hard…I made the best of it this last year, and I didn’t end up riding that much, but I did a lot of core stability, visited my chiropracter, did a lot of work in the gym, and I did a lot more emphasis than in years past on that. I still got to ride my bike quite a bit. But we had so many training camps and the season’s so long that it really doesn’t affect you so much.

schmalz Do ride a lot indoors, do you ride on the rollers in Chicago, or do you wait until the weather clears?

VDV I just do it, man, I just get out there and get it done.

schmalz What was the coldest day you…

VDV I don’t go when it’s under 20, apart from that, I’m outside.

schmalz That’s gotta be pretty brutal in the wintertime there.

VDV You know what, the most brutal part about it is that I don’t have much diversification for riding, almost like I go out the same exact way every day and that cracks me more than anything.

schmalz You don’t go to the Chicago mountains?

VDV I LIVE in the Chicago mountains, and it takes me about a minute fifty seconds to get up it.

schmalz (laughs) So what focus of your training are you going to change this year? Are you going to change anything, or do you think you need to change anything?

VDV I might change just a little bit, but for the most part I’m not going to change much. I’m not going to say ‘oh, I’m a Tour contender now’, I’m gonna do this and that and change my whole psychology and training. No, I don’t think I should nor even wanna do that. So, I’m gonna try to keep it to the playbook, and repeat a lot of similar things I did this year.

schmalz Well, it worked last year, so…

VDV Yeah

schmalz I think that your attitude has changed. Now that you’re not thinking of yourself as maybe the leader, but you thinking of yourself as the leader, that’s going to change things quite a bit.

VDV Yeah, I think it’ll change things even at races like the Tour of California and things like that. I’ll be maybe a bit more ambitious with other things, not ambitious, I’m always ambitious, but I’ll have more confidence in what I can and can’t do.

schmalz Yeah, and you get to yell at Zabriskie more.

VDV (laughs) Oh, Zabriskie, Zabriskie will be there in my corner, and he’s hysterical no matter what.

schmalz At least he’ll make it entertaining if nothing else.

VDV Yeah.