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I am Ted King: Time to celebrate

Published: May. 24, 2009
Gerrans wins on the final climb to the Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca.
Gerrans wins on the final climb to the Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca.
Photo: Graham Watson

Simon Gerrans won yesterday's stage 14 of the Giro! At our hotel last night, there were fireworks, there was dancing, the champagne was flowing, and music was blaring!

Of course I think this has less to do with Simon's win and more to do with the wedding reception at our hotel last night.

In fact, it's worth pointing out that the music made sleeping difficult between the hours of 11pm through 2am, and the cannon like fireworks seemed a bit excessive. But I'm sure that everyone at the wedding party had a great time and the Giro d'Italia was the last thing on their minds.

We cyclists, however, are now two-thirds of the way through the Giro and racing is the sole thing on our minds. This final week of the Giro will certainly feature fireworks of its own kind and our focus grows stronger and stronger by the day.

Yesterday's win by Gerro was perfect. To apply pressure to Rabobank and the other contenders' teams, we threw as many people into the early breakaway as possible. Fortunately, in a fourteen man move, we had a pair from Cervélo with our Irishman, Philip Deignan, and Simon. Breakaways are never a guarantee, especially the ones that go right from the gun. But Gerro has been riding great this spring with three top-tens in the very difficult hilly classics week, and he was super strong yesterday to claim his second win in a grand tour.

As we have said from the beginning, the Cervélo TestTeam's sole objective at this Giro is to put Carlos Sastre on the podium at the conclusion of the race in Rome. Anything beyond that is just icing on the cake. So taking a look at the current state of things, we are right on schedule. Carlos is sitting comfortably in fifth place with a very difficult final week ahead of us, and, thankfully this difficult territory is where Carlos thrives. We have had guys regularly in the breakaways taking pressure off of Carlos, the team is humming along like a well oiled machine, and clearly Simon's win is a hefty, sugary portion of that icing on the cake!

And just for clarification, we did have a bit of celebratory champagne at our team dinner table as well.

Editor's Note: This year Ted King is making his professional European racing debut with the upstart Cervélo TestTeam. While first getting a taste for the European peloton with the U.S. espoir national team in 2005, King returned to the United States for three successful years of domestic pro racing. King, 26, is a native of New Hampshire and despite his affinity for hearty servings of coffee, he is slowly adapting to the smaller European portions. Slowly. His diaries will appear on VeloNews.com every few days during the Giro, alternating with diaries by Columbia-Highroad's Michael Barry. When he's not racing the Giro, you can follow Ted at www.Cervelo.com/team and www.iamTedKing.MissingSaddle.com. For those of you content with 140 characters or less, you can also track his activities at www.twitter.com/iamtedking.