Team Garmin-Sharp time trials(Image credit: Bettini Photo)
Stage 12 winner David Millar (Garmin-Sharp) on the podium.(Image credit: Sirotti)
David Zabriskie (Garmin - Sharp)(Image credit: Bettini Photo)
Christian Vande Velde (Garmin Sharp) back to racing after his Tour de France crashes.(Image credit: Jonathan Devich/epicimages.us)
Garmin-Sharp has selected a mix of talented youth and experienced veterans for the team time trial world championships in Tuscany, with David Millar, Tyler Farrar, Dave Zabriskie and Christian Vande Velde providing the experience and power, while Rohan Dennis and Andrew Talansky add the youthful enthusiasm and huge talent to the six-rider squad.
The American squad has prepared less than the likes of BMC and 2012 winners Omega Pharma-Quick Step but has years of experience and success in team time trials and won the Tour de France team time trial in 2011.
David Millar predicted the 57km world championship TTT will be 60 minutes of pain due to the sheer speed and power that the riders will need to produce to have a chance of taking the world title or even to finish on the podium.
"It's going to hurt like hell because there's nowhere to hide out there," the Briton told Cyclingnews after riding the course with his teammates during the closed-road practice session on Saturday.
Team time trial specialists
Garmin-Sharp has selected their line-up from riders who competed at the USA Procycling Challenge in Colorado and at the Tour of Alberta in Canada.
Dennis won the general classification on Canada, while Talansky was second in the time trial stage in Colorado. Zabriskie has raced little this year and fractured his collarbone while warming up for the time trial stage at the Tour of California. He won the time trial stage of the Giro d'Italia to Florence in 2006 but was disqualified from the result after he confessed to doping as a witness in the USADA investigation into Lance Armstrong and the US Postal Service team.
Get The Leadout Newsletter
The latest race content, interviews, features, reviews and expert buying guides, direct to your inbox!
"We've stuck our team together from Colorado and Alberta. We've got a core team and we've got lots of experience," Millar said, conceding that Garmin-Sharp have not prepared specifically for the event as much as BMC and Orica-GreenEdge opting to use their years of experience in team time trials as the foundation of their squad.
"It's about being smooth and strong. It's a real TTT specialists course. The bigger teams of specialists will do well," Millar predicted.
"Something times you an get away a mixed team if it’s a technical course with lots of changes in direction but this is a TTT specialists course. Orica and BMC will be good but we're going to give it a good go. We've got plenty of TTT experience and have done a lot of work in the past."
Stephen is one of the most experienced members of the Cyclingnews team, having reported on professional cycling since 1994. Before becoming Editor-at-large, he was Head of News at Cyclingnews. He has previously worked for Shift Active Media, Reuters and Cycling Weekly. He is a member of the Board of the Association Internationale des Journalistes du Cyclisme (AIJC).
