Roubaix or bust! | Cyclingnews

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Good in Gent(Image credit: Sirotti)

An interview with George Hincapie, November 29, 2004

Lance Armstrong's right (and sometimes left) hand man has had a remarkable career as one of the top U.S. cyclists in the world ranks. Since turning professional in 1994, he has established himself as a dangerous threat in any of the top one-day classics and smaller stage races - winning races like Gent-Wevelgem in 2001 and the Three Days of De Panne in 2004. A USPRO road champion and a four-time Olympian, he started racing as a junior in the mid-1980s and has not slowed down since.

Each year, with the exception of 2003, George begins his season on a campaign for an elusive World Cup win, coming close in 2001 with a fourth at Paris-Roubaix and in 2002 with another fourth in the Tour of Flanders, before shifting focus to Lance and Le Tour. However, next year looks to be a little different for the Greenville, S.C. resident, as Lance has pledged to help him in the Spring Classics and World Cup races, with an obvious goal of finally hoisting the granite trophy in Roubaix.

GH: Obviously cycling has been in the news a lot lately, and that's always tough to read. But I still love the sport. When I was 12 years old, coming home from school and riding my bicycle 20 miles a day, doing 40 sprints, and doing these crazy training rides because I loved the sport. Obviously the training is different now, and there's a lot more pressure, but I just think about those times when I was doing the sport for fun.

Even though cycling is in the news for a lot of bad reasons lately, there are a ton of more cyclists coming into the sport, older and younger. Every Tour de France I go to, I see more and more Americans and riders along side the road. I go around the country in the off-season doing charity and club rides, and the people just love the sport and love our team. So no matter what some people say, we are doing good, we are inspiring some people. And that is what keeps me going, to see some of the reactions people get when we made history winning the Tour de France. But hopefully things will clean up and it won't be in the news for that anymore.

GH: Roubaix the first one! And then the Flanders [Ronde van Vlaanderen]... the early season ones, because if you do the Tour, especially the way we've done it, you hope you have good form. You can never really specifically train for [anything], like the Olympics for instance, I went there but was still worn out from the Tour. It's kinda hard to plan for that time of the year, so my goals are for the spring.

GH: Having Lance at any race is a huge deal. He brings the team up another notch just having him around. When he did Flanders and the other races a couple of years ago it was a big deal, so I am looking forward to it. It should be a lot of fun. The thing is when Lance was doing the Tour of Flanders and all that, it was kind of stressful - it will be different this year since he is doing them because he wants to do them. Last year he was doing it to help me and I was like, great, he's gonna crash because he was helping me! [laughs] But he's an asset to any team and to have him around is a big deal.

GH: Not great. I did Georgia and I was worn out from the Classics, so that didn't go too well. It was fun to race so close to home - it had great courses and well organized. It was definitely fun to see, I just wish I was racing a little better. The only other race was San Francisco, and that went pretty well - I was third. I was there to try and win the race, but I didn't have it in the legs. I trained well for it, but I guess I was just a little worn out from the long season. But the guy who won was riding really well and had a great day.

GH: It was just super, super hard - which it was for everybody so it's not an excuse. For me I just didn't feel fresh. It took me a long time to get recovered from the Tour. Sometimes you can just wing it after the Tour - you can have one day where you don't feel good but can still ride really well, and you end up doing a good race, but it didn't work out for me that way. I was spent in the beginning [laughs] and just barely finished that race. It was kind of a bummer - it was a really good course but there wasn't really anything I could do - so I was disappointed with the end result.

But the U.S. riders rode well. It's tough to say, the team that was there it was a good team - with the exception of Lance, Freddy and Horner, and a few other guys, it was the best riders in the U.S. If you would have added those guys, it would have been a bit different, but who knows how different the result would have been? There's ten guys capable of doing that race in the U.S., and we have five of those.

GH: I think it's a sign - Lance has helped U.S. cycling tremendously winning six Tours de France, has gotten people into the sport more, and motivated a lot of the younger riders. The TIAA-CREF team that has a lot of the up-and-coming riders and the U-23 national team has several guys that I hear about. A guy that I train with is part of the future of U.S. cycling. It is going to be hard to match what Lance has done obviously, but there is some depth there and hopefully in the next couple of years they will start making the headlines in Europe.

GH: I was lucky because I [first] raced for a team like Motorola. They can take care of you and not throw you in the mix of things and end up getting lost. If you can get on a team like ours where someone will really take care of you or a team like TIAA-CREF, I would go that route, as opposed to getting on a big European team and not knowing anybody. I think for me, personally, I don't think I would have succeeded in that type of a situation.

GH: If we could have a few more teams like TIAA-CREF, where they can race against the top riders in the U.S. and do stints of European races a month at a time - I think they are racing the Baby Giro - and the program where they can go race in Belgium, these programs are really helping out. But some sponsorship dollars coming in [would help]. We're actually going to do the clothing for the TIAA-CREF team this year, so we're pretty excited about that.