19 teams make up the race’s deepest-ever field.
by Joe Lindsey
Amgen Tour of California organizers revealed today the full 19-team lineup for the May 15-22 stage race, and while the actual riders to make up each team’s roster are yet to be decided, at first glance the field will be the best ever assembled at the race.
It’s certainly the largest. The 2010 edition had 16 teams and only in 2007 did the race approach the kind of size it will have this year, when 18 teams took part.
What’s more, the number of UCI ProTeams has increased by two, to nine total, and the number of Pro Continental teams has doubled, to four.
That made competition for U.S.-based Continental teams somewhat fierce, and all the moreso with the addition of the Continental Movistar team from Colombia, which might be a nod to the UCI’s directive (roundly ignored this season) that certain UCI-rated races on Continental calendars are required to invite the top three teams from the previous year’s Continental rankings for that region. Did I mention this has been totally ignored?
As such, just five Continental teams from the U.S. will get a start. But because of shifts in the racing scene (like Team Type 1 and UnitedHealthcare going from Continental to Pro Continental), every U.S. Continental team that got a start last year still gets one this year; and there is even room for one new team, Jamis-Sutter Home.
The most notable snub is the RealCyclist.com team, which is nominally stronger on paper than Jamis-Sutter Home, with Cole House, Cesar Grajales, 2010 Tour of California KOM winner Thomas Rabou and Francisco Mancebo. Mancebo’s rocky past might be part of why the team was not invited, but I’m not sure that’s the case because he did race in 2009, winning the first stage.
Overall, the 19 teams represent nine registered nations and is a great cross-section of talent from the world’s top-ranked team, Leopard-Trek, down to Rocky-style punchers like Bissell.
If each team is granted eight riders as in the past, that’ll make for 152 racers. And this year’s route is arguably the hardest ever, with two true mountaintop finishes (and a nominal third one at Northstar Ski Resort at Tahoe), plus the return of the pivotal 15-mile Solvang time trial.
The full list of teams, with possible headliners and fan favorites:
ProTeams
- BMC Racing – George Hincapie, Taylor Phinney, Brent Bookwalter
- Garmin-Cervelo – Dave Zabriskie, Peter Stetina
- HTC-Highroad – Tejay van Garderen, a Velits or two
- Leopard-Trek – les freres Schleck, Spartacus, Jens Voigt
- Liquigas-Cannondale – Peter Sagan, Ted King, Timmy Duggan
- Rabobank – Bauke Mollema or Robert Gesink, U23 World Champ Michael Matthews
- RadioShack – 3x winner Levi Leipheimer, US Pro champ Ben King
- Saxo Bank-Sungard – Alberto Contador or Richie Porte, JJ Haedo
- Sky – defending champion Michael Rogers, Edvald Boassen Hagen, Michael Barry
Pro Continental Teams
- NetApp – Steve Cozza
- Team Type 1-Sanofi Aventis – Rubens Bertogliati, Kiel Reijnen, Ben King
- Spidertech Powered by C10 – Svein Tuft, Francois Parisien, Lucas Euser
- UnitedHealthcare – Rory Sutherland, Christian Meier, Scott Zwizanski
Continental Teams
- Movistar – Oscar Soliz, Gregory Brenes
- Kelly Benefit Strategies – Mike Friedman, Mike Creed, Jason Donald
- Jelly Belly-Kenda – Brad Huff, Jeremy Powers
- Kenda-5 Hour Energy – Luca Damiani, Ben Day, Phil Gaimon
- Bissell – Ben and Andy Jacques-Mayne, Jay Thomson
- Jamis-Sutter Home – Alejandro Borrajo, Nick Frey
Correction: an earlier version of this blog incorrectly stated that Francisco Mancebo was part of the partially excluded Rock Racing team in 2008; Mancebo didn’t race for Rock until 2009.