Super teammate
For most people who don’t follow professional cycling, I imagine the sport seems like a very individual pursuit. But teamwork—an often overlooked portion of professional cycle racing—plays an incredibly important role. The only race that Americans pay ay attention to is the Tour de France and Lance Armstrong’s 7-year dominance of it before his retirement 2 years ago. But there’s no way that Lance could have won any of those Tour de France without the team that he handpicked for himself. CSC, who have had their share of scandal recently (first Basso, then Riis) built their successes on solid teamwork. That’s one thing I loved about racing for Team Aggress in Arizona—we were all in the race to help each other or the rider we’d designated as the contender for any particular race. When I crashed out of the crit last year, I was blocking for my teammate who was soloing off the front. This year, that same teammate set up our friend Brian for the AZ Crit Championship with a selfless move on the last lap. However, the award for best teammate has to go to Leonardo Piepoli at this year’s Giro. Sacrificing any individual glory, which he had rightly earned, he gave Riccó Stage 15 and allowed Gibo reclaim some of his past glory on Stage 17. What a guy.