The Argyle Armada Sails for France

Reached at his home in Colorado, Slipstream-Chipotle director Vaughters downplayed the team’s general classification chances at the Tour de France but was confident about the team’s ability to win stages and animate the race. Thanks to an 18-mile individual time trial and two moderately mountainous stages during the first seven days of the Tour, “We’ve got a really good shot at taking the yellow jersey toward the end of the first week with Dave Zabriskie and David Millar,” notes Vaughters. Zabriskie, 28, came from cycling powerhouse CSC and is the current US National time trial champion and the only American to have won stages in the Tours of Spain, France, and Italy.

He also has the fastest ever Tour stage, when on stage 1 of the 2004 Tour Zabriskie’s 35.84 mph average time trial speed bested the record previously set by Greg LeMond during his1989 Tour-winning time trial on the Champs-Élysées. Millar, 30, holds the British national time trial championship and has won four Tour de France stages. With these two time-trialing aces on board with a host of climbing-ready domestiques to support them, Vaughters has reason to be confident about the team’s chances of carrying the Maillot Jaune during the first week of July.

As for the team’s overall chances, Vaughters thinks Illinois-born Christian Vande Velde could crack the top 10 in the general classification. “We’ll find out,” Vaughters lets on with the guarded optimism of a director who knows how to manage expectations. Vandevelde, 31, is an experienced Tour de France domestique who supported two of Lance Armstrong’s winning Tour efforts. “Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t,” says Vaughters of Vande Velde’s chances of placing near the top when the Tour concludes in Paris on July 27. “But we are going to be an attacking team. We’ll be going for stages… We are more like a Three Musketeers team,” says Vaughters, a tactician who clearly relishes the fact that pro cycling—especially over a 20-day stage race—is a big rolling chess game. And he’s especially delighted by the prospect of taking an aggressive, opportunistic roll as an unproven American team in the 2008 Tour de France.

Along with Vande Velde, Zabriskie, and Millar, Slipstream-Chipotle’s ability to animate the 2008 Tour is increased thanks to the acquisition of seasoned Grand Tour riders like Frenchman Christophe Laurent, who came from the top French squad Credit Agricole; Swedish national champ and Tour stage winner Magnus Backstedt; New Zealand national champion and sprinter Julian Dean; and Durango, Colorado’s Tom Danielson, who rode for Armstrong’s Discovery Channel team and placed sixth overall in the 2006 Tour of Spain.

Asked how he selects the nine riders out of a team of 25 who will throw down on July 5 in Brest, Vaughters admits to a subjective process that factors in current year race results and his own longer-term development objectives for younger riders. He is “looking at race results for the whole season… and looking to develop guys for later.”

Vaughters said 2001 under-23 world champion Danny Pate is one rider he is likely to start grooming for future greatness in this year’s Tour. Now 28, the Colorado Springs-born Pate is known on the US domestic circuit for his fearless attacking. Pate is not afraid to spend a day alone off the front, and he fits into Vaughter’s notion of the team as a band of storming musketeers. Yet, it’s one thing to attack in a 90-minute domestic criterium or five-day US stage race; how will young riders like Pate adjust to the three-week Tour de France? Vaughters says he will advise his first-time Tour riders, like Pate, to focus on the daily stages and not the immensity of the entire Tour. “I’ll tell them to take it day by day… Tomorrow’s 120 miles. You can ride 120 miles. That’s the only way to do it as a young rider.”

Vaughters, who is also CEO of Slipstream Sports, the organization that owns the team, was able to bolster his support for young riders when Ellis cold called Vaughters in 2006 and asked how he could become involved with the team. Ellis first fell for cycling while living in Spain, where he saw LeMond beat Fignon in the 1989 Tour. “I turned on Eurosport while I was in Madrid and I was thrilled to see LeMond,” Ellis recalls. Two decades later, Ellis has his own team in the same race, and says “it feels great. It’s the culmination of a dream.”