Blog Posts From Active Expert: Bruce Hildenbrand Tagged With bob_stapleton

Cavendish Scores Third Giro Stage Win, Drives 30 Minutes Home

guest — Sat, 23 May 2009 02:59:06 GMT

Mark Cavendish won his third stage of the Giro today in Florence (Firenze if you are Italian). Last year he won two stages in Italy so this has to be viewed as at least a 50% improvement for the just-turned 24-year-old pro on Columbia Highroad. Mark and his fiance live about 20 miles away from Florence so this was a homecoming of sorts. It is doubly nice to win in front of friends and loved ones.

The big news after the stage was that Cavendish will be departing the race and will not start Saturday's stage. While you might think that the Manx man should sack up and finish the race, this is pretty common these days among the top riders. You might remember that Cavendish won four stages of the Tour de France in 2008, before exiting that race in the final week to rest up and prepare for the Beijing Olympics.

In 2008, he finished the Giro mainly because there were a few flat stages in the final week where he had the chance to win. In the 2009 edition, the final week features uphill finishes and time trials and offers little opportunities for the sprinters. At only 24-years-old Cavendish has many more grand tours in his legs and will be exiting stage left so he can drive the 30 minutes home to rest.

Cavendish has a new book hitting the shelves, 'Boy Racer', co-written with Procycling magazine's Features Editor Daniel Friebe. It should be a good read.

One of the rumours surrounding Cavendish is that when his contract is up at the end of the 2009 season, he will switch teams to ride for the new British professional cycling squad Team Sky. If I was the director of Team Sky and I wanted to get one British rider who would bring instant success to my team, that rider would be Mark Cavendish. It might cost you 25% (or more) of your total team budget, but the guy can win races and big races at that. Just make sure to hire a couple of his leadout men as well.

It would be sad to see Cavendish leave Columbia Highroad. Three years ago, Team Owner Bob Stapleton took a chance on the just-then-20-year-old rider and as Mark has blossomed, Stapleton has done what it takes to build a team around the sprinter. There is a lot of great chemistry on Columbia Highroad. I am hoping that Stapleton finds a way to keep Mark on the team.

There is another big race going on besides the Giro. Over in Spain the Tour of Catalonia is hotting up and Garmin-Slipstream rider Dan Martin is showing some incredible form. Last year, he won the Route Du Sud just before the Tour in the same region. On the hardest stage of Catalonia, he finished second, beating Alejandro Valverde and moving up to second place overall. Nice riding!

Bruce

Team Columbia Shines

guest — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:21:14 GMT

For the first time in Tour history there are two American teams participating and both are showing well. While Jonathan Vaughters' Garmin-Chipotle squad has been sending riders up the road and getting a lot of TV time, Team Columbia has quietly been leaving it's mark, though as the days progress, that mark seems to be getting bigger and bigger.

Bob Stapleton's squad now holds the yellow (Kim Kirchen), green (Kirchen) and white (Thomas Lokvist) jerseys as well as a stage win by Mark Cavendish which all adds up to an exceptional showing in the first week of the Tour. And what makes the results even more impressive is that Team Columbia is doing it with a bunch of young riders. Cavendish, Lokvist, Gerard Ciolek Marcus Burghardt and Kanstantin Siutsov are all 25 years old or younger and are in either their first or second year at the Tour. Adam Hansen and Bernard Eisel are just 27 and it is the first Tour for Hansen.

This might seem like a coincidence, but it's not. You may remember that Team Columbia started the year as Team High Road Sports which before that was the old T-Mobile/Team Telekom squad. T-Mobile was rocked by doping allegations during the 2006 Tour which left Jan Ullrich out of the race and at the end of the season, the sponsors put Stapleton in charge, hoping that fresh blood at the top could turn things around. Unfortunately, the problems with the team were much deeper than just upper management and 2007 was another year of doping scandals for team.

At the team's training camp this past January, I talked with Bob about the 2007 season. He felt like he had let everyone down, having been brought in to make a difference only to see the same things happen. To be honest, it wasn't his fault.He inherited riders and team management which were still operating under the previous mindset. So, for 2008, Bob cleaned house with major personnel changes both on and off the bike. It was a total overhaul as only two riders from the team prior to 2006 were re-signed.

Also, Stapleton engaged the Agence for Ethics in Cycling(ACE) to do periodic drug testing and monitoring of biological parameters. This is the same outfit which is working with the other American team Garmin-Chipotle. So, now it is Bob's team and the buck stops with the soft-spoken resident of San Luis Obispo in

California.

The team had been enjoying a hugely successful season with Kirchen's win at Fleche Wallone, Siutsov's victory at Tour de Georgia and three stage wins in the Giro d'Italia just to name a few of the teams 70+ wins. To be sure, some of those victories have come from the women's team which has also been having a stellar season. All in all, it really does appear that Stapleton has turned things around and with the recent signing of Columbia Sportswear as the title sponsor, these guys are truly on a roll.

Race Notes

-After a week of watching every French rider in the peloton go up the road (having not won their home race in 23 years must be creating some sort of inferiority complex), it was refreshing to see three Spaniards and an Italian in the the critical move today. As we get closer to the Pyrenees, expect the Spaniards to be even more animated.

-Spartacus(Fabian Cancellara) is having some fun with the race officials. He is wearing unlucky race number 13 which he wears upside down on his left side.

-It was great to see George Hincapie at the front today working for team leader Kim Kirchen. It brings back memories when Hincapie would sit on the front all day for Lance Armstrong. If there was ever a better domestique, well, I can't think of one at the moment.

-Was anybody surprised to see Jens Voigt in the breakaway today going for a stage win? Like Mark Cavendish, that guy is excitement on wheels. He tried and tried in the Giro earlier this year before winning just a few dyas before the finish. I am hoping that he gets another stage win in France. If it happens it certainly won't be for lack of trying.

-Alejandro Valverde looks like an advertisement for the the Mummy Returns. His entire right calf and right arm are wrapped in bandages from a crash on stage 5.The fact that he finished second to Ricardo Ricco on the next days mountain stage is incredible since he was only able to sleep for two hours because of the injury. These guys truly are the hard men of the road.

-the Garmin-Chipotle team continued it's aggressive ways with David Millar jumping into the same breakway as Jens Voigt. With Millar only a minute back from the yellow jersey he probably wasn't warmly welcomed into the move by his breakaway companions, but it was yet another indication that the team weren't just in France to eat some crepes and work on their tans.

Columbia Sportswear Follows the High Road

guest — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 03:10:58 GMT

Bob Stapleton, head honcho of Team High Road, announced today that he has signed Columbia Sportswear as a primary sponsor of his wildly successful professional men's and women's cycling teams. The three year deal will put substantial cash as well as outerwear, sportswear, shoes and luggage on both his men's and women's teams with the name changing from High Road to Team Columbia. With many of it's 4000 employees located in both France and Switzerland, Stapleton commented that Columbia saw this as a "cost effective marketing tool to expand their brand in Europe."

The seeds of the deal began back in 2005 when Stapleton approached the Portland-based sportswear company to help sponsor his woman's team. "I wasn't going to start looking for a sponsor until after the Tour," noted the founder of VoiceStream Wireless also a pacific northwest-based company.

The sponsorship begins immediately with the unveiling of the new kit at the Tour de France on July 3rd in Brest. Obviously, the Columbia Sportswear logo will be the most prominent feature with the primary colors being blue, black, yellow and white. "You will still see High Road on there. It is the brand of my company and I have grown fond of seeing it on the jersey," added Stapleton.

The team's racing schedule will not change to reflect the North American sponsor. "There will be no change in direction of the team. They want us to be active on both continents," said the man whose men's and women's teams have won over 70 races so far this season.

Bob also answered questions about the state of the sport and how it affects attracting new sponsors. Probably the hottest topic is the brewing conflict and probably split between the UCI and ASO. "It is very much an open issue. I think you could see two rival circuits for some time; probably not for long. It is a big headache for the teams and it may put athletes at risk. It creates some uncertainty as to what sponsors are buying. I am not excited about the power struggle, but I think we http://community.active.com/blogs/BruceHildenbrand/2008/06/16/columbia-sportswear-follows-the-high-road/High Road can navigate it effectively," noted Stapleton.

As to his role in resolving the conflict, "I am a centrist. It is the biggest benefit I have as an outsider. Some of the issues are personal. Some people just don't get along. I try to be the peacemaker."

Bruce