Tejay van Garderen said Wednesday that he is currently in better form than he was heading into the Tour de France last year when he finished fifth, and he is confident he can finish on the race's podium for the first time.
The BMC Racing leader spoke with reporters via conference call from his home in Nice after recently returning from an altitude training camp in the Dolomites with teammate Brent Bookwalter.
"Everything seems right on track," van Garderen said. "All the numbers in training, the weight, the health, everything seems to be going perfect. I took a lot of motivation and morale out of the Dauphiné result, so I'm just excited to get things going."
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Van Garderen finished second earlier this month at the Critérium du Dauphiné, where he led the race going into the final day before losing by 10 seconds to Chris Froome, Team Sky's 2013 Tour winner. Froome, of course, will be at the Tour this year, along with fellow pre-race favourites Vincenzo Nibali (Astana), the defending champion; Alberto Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo), recent Giro d'Italia winner and two-time Tour champion; and Nairo Quintana (Movistar), winner of the 2014 Giro d'Italia.
To reach the podium, the 26-year-old American will have to out-ride several of the sport's biggest names over the span of three weeks. Buoyed by his early season success, good form and relatively smooth run up to July, however, van Garderen made no bones about his chances to make the podium when the race concludes July 26 on the Champs-Élysées.
"I believe on any given day I can beat those guys," he said. "I've shown already that I've beaten them before. It's quite another thing to beat them consistently over three weeks. But if you look at past stages of races I've done, just this year at Catalunya when I won the stage to La Molina, Contador was third. On the stage to Pra-Loup this year in the Dauphiné, Bardet won the stage, I was second and Froome third. So it's not like when those guys attack I just say 'Ok, I'll see you later.' I'm getting closer to them."
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