When the merger that led to the formation of Cannondale-Garmin was confirmed last summer, it seemed apt that the only man signed up to the team for the next three years was the lone rider to have been a part of the Slipstream project from its very outset.
Alex Howes was part of the first crop of juniors to ride for Jonathan Vaughters’ 5280-Subaru team in Colorado in 2003, and he has remained part of the structure, through its various guises, almost all of the way since.
“I’ve been with them more or less since I was a junior and to be honest I can’t find any complaints. We were talking and we just said, let’s keep it going,” Howes says of the contract extension. “Franchise player, I guess.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Or tenured professor, perhaps. Certainly, it’s been a lengthy education to this point, and after being versed in the basics at 5280 and the Slipstream development set-up, Howes’ first three seasons in the professional peloton with Garmin were akin to graduate school. Now 27, Howes’ student days are surely behind him, given that so many of Garmin’s older guard – David Millar, David Zabriskie, Christian Vande Velde – have bowed out over the past two years.
Indeed, it was the very arrival of those veterans in 2008 that sent Howes to France for his lone season outside of the Slipstream set-up, after consultation with Vaughters – his study abroad programme, so to speak. The increasing Anglophone influence in top-level cycling has forever changed the way young riders from America enter the professional ranks, but Howes’ season at VC La Pomme – who had just sent Dan Martin to the professional ranks with Slipstream – had plenty in common with the school of hard knocks experienced by previous generations.
“I was 20 years old. So just surviving outside of your parents’ house at that age is something, let alone moving to a foreign country where you don’t speak the language and you’re trying to compete every week,” Howes says. “There were a lot of changes and adaptations that had to take place there. I certainly wouldn’t call it a year wasted but it wasn’t a vacation either. I wouldn’t call it nose to the grindstone, I’d call it more getting run over by the grindstone. It was tough.”
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://ift.tt/1BLQEff
No comments:
Post a Comment