Tom Danielson: the interview: part 2

By Daniel McMahon

In part 1 of my interview with Tom Danielson, the 31-year-old Connecticut native talked about his foray into the Classics, his off-season, and his involvement in developing cycling in Boulder, Colorado, where the Garmin-Slipstream rider now resides.

Here, in part 2, Tommy D talks about how he coped with having to pull out of the Vuelta because of illness, his trip to Worlds, Cadel Evans, his special diet, and why he’ll be riding with the best again in 2010.

Daniel McMahon: What’s your role on the team? And how is it decided which races you’ll do?

Tom Danielson: The last two years aren’t really good examples of what exactly my role on the team is. I mean, they sort of made it clear to me that they want to have me race more for results, and I think that’s personally where I’m at, who I am. And now that I’m able to do it, next year I’ll be able to have a great year and get some really good results.

We haven’t sat down and talked seriously about the race scheduling, but there will be some big races early in the year that I’ll be focusing on, where the team will want me to go for the overall and results. Like I said, I’m not a one-day racer. Fortunately, there aren’t many one-day race on the calendar—we have other guys for that.

I think the focus will be, for me, stage racing, so kind of how I envision it—and how I think the team envisions it—is, I’ll do a bunch of [races, such as] Murcia, maybe Paris-Nice, and Volta Catalunya. Those races I’d like to be in good shape for and kind of set the tone for the year. I need to show I’m capable of getting results in these races, and that sets me up well for Tour California. I’ll probably be doing that instead of the Giro. The Tour California is a great race with high-altitude climbing—such as Big Bear—and a long time trial. Then I’ll probably go back over to Europe, whether it’s the Dauphine or the Tour de Suisse. Hopefully, my results in all those races will set me up for the Tour.

Obviously, they don’t want to send me to the Tour just sort of as a helper, so if I can show that I’m in good shape and get good results, it would make good sense to select me for the Tour to help whoever is the leader on the team at that point. Then, at the same time, go for some results on some of the mountain stages, in the process of helping, so we’ll see where everybody’s at. You never know. If everything goes to plan, I would envision that to be sort of the role on the team.

DM: It would be your first Tour.

TD: Yep.

DM: How does that play off the Vuelta, which you’ve been doing pretty consistently and has been your big race?

TD: It’s really up to where everything’s at. If I’ve been able to get good results during the year up until the Tour, and I do finally make the Tour, then at the Vuelta we’ll see how tired I am, how the other guys on the team are, and how their roles played out. I mean, you’ve got to look at our team like a business: We need results and lots of races. So if there are no guys who are capable of getting results for the Vuelta, and the Tour guys are doing the Giro and doing the Tour, obviously they can’t do the Vuelta. And if I don’t do the Giro, maybe it sets me up for the Vuelta, then maybe again I’ll do the Vuelta.

DM: It’s been an important race for you.

TD: I love the Vuelta. I think it’s a great race, and I like Spain. This year it was quite different from other Vueltas—it was a lot harder. It felt more like a Giro than a Vuelta. I definitely know that race and understand that race, so obviously if I do that race again I’ll do it to get a result.

Next year one of my goals is definitely to do a good overall. This year I had a taste of what it felt like to be a podium contender in a Grand Tour, and I felt like I was right there. There was one thing that took me away from that—and that was getting the flu. [Laughs] Had I not gotten that, for sure I think I would have been on the podium in that race—or close to it. That was the first time in my career I’d ever been there.

One of the things we’ve talked about is the mental training and the preparation I’ll be doing in the off-season, and I’ll be 100 percent focused. Taking the feelings and sensations and beliefs that I had every day [in the Vuelta]—when I was one of the best guys in the world—and applying that to everyday training, so that when I show up next year I am a podium contender in these big races and believe it. That’s the key to doing it.

DM: You were top 10 for several days and 4th on key stages.

TD: Yeah, I was 4th till I got sick, and when I was sick I was still top 10. When I was 4th, I still had three good stages plus a time-trail stage to improve on it. I was a very comfortable 4th. I was pretty confident that I could have improved on that.

DM: Since then you’ve talked about how tough it was to have to leave a Grand Tour so close to the podium. How did you deal with that?

TD: Yeah, it was really disappointing. I can sort of point to the key moment. I can say why I got sick; I can see it all so clearly. I get angry and I get upset and I get frustrated when I see that one thing that took what I see as a podium from me. I controlled everything: I had my diet controlled, I had my infrastructure controlled, I had sleep, my training, I was in top form, I was in the right position every day. I was not missing any splits. I had the team helping me, putting me into good position. I felt I had everything under control. The one thing I couldn’t control was people getting sick around the race.

When you’re racing and your immune system is compromised, especially when you’re doing the overall classification in a race such as a Grand Tour, every day you have to be in the front. Every day is a one-day race. You have to be one of the best guys in the race or else you’ll lose time. Even when it’s a flat stage you have to be strong enough, focused enough, confident enough, skilled enough to be in the front, to miss all the problems.

I definitely had feelings of anger and frustration. It was a really tough moment for me, and even tougher was to accept it and swallow it. It’s just one of those hard things in cycling. Like in a lot of other sports, you know, your results are viewed as touchdowns or goals scored. For me, all but four stages I was in the top 5 best riders in the world. I have to look at it as that: to look at all the finishes where I beat the best GC guys in the time trial, and I was there every day with them in the climbs—comfortably. I have to see that. And that’s huge for me. That’s the best I’ve ever been in my career. Obviously, there’s only one place to go with that—and that’s to improve on it. Take the mistakes and the details and the small things needed to improve and improve on them.

I think that is really the key for me next year. To go into—whether it’s the Tour or the Giro or whatever Grand Tour I do next year—to go into that race knowing what went wrong in the Vuelta and what went right and every day use what went right so that I know what it takes to train, what it takes to feel like, prepare, show up, and be one of the best guys in the world. So I know that and I know what can derail me, so I need to eliminate that. If I can do those two things, then I’m a podium contender in whatever race I show up at. That’s my goal for next year. That’s how I’m dealing with the Vuelta.

DM: Then you did the Worlds. How did you feel there?

TD: You know, there was some place in my mind where I thought I could overcome being sick in a short period of time! [Laughs] And I still saw that form I had in the Vuelta and I figured, If I could just get well I can still do Worlds. I felt, Who knows? Maybe I will be well again by the Worlds, maybe I won’t. I took a chance; I went to Worlds; I wasn’t a 100 percent. I was maybe 60 percent. The reason I had to abandon the Vuelta is that the flu that I had turned into bronchitis when I was pushing myself too hard to try to maintain my GC while being still sick. Racing with bronchitis is not really possible. My lungs just got so messed up because I raced with bronchitis for so long in the Vuelta till I couldn’t really breathe anymore, and then I only had a week to get well. That just wasn’t enough time. My lungs were still totally messed up. I felt better, but I didn’t have any power.

Anyone who knows me knows my lungs are really my assets. I didn’t really have that, so I did the best I could in the Worlds. I think I was 23rd or something in the time trial, and in the road race I did the best I could, but if you’re not 100 percent or near it you really can’t be there, and I was there all the way till the last lap till the final selection was made. I didn’t have that extra oomph. The same in the time trial. Sure, I could ride one speed that’s pretty fast, you know, fast enough for 23rd in a time trial, but you need that little extra killer drive, that little extra ability to dig deep to get that top 10 or top 5 result. It was the same in the road race. I could make that group of 40, you know, but when they all accelerated on that steep climb I just continued to go that same speed, and it just wasn’t good enough.

DM: What did you think of Evans’s performance?

TD: I thought it was great. I was really happy for him. I’ve known Cadel since the early days on mountain bikes, and he’s had the same sort of shitty luck since then. He’s been trying to win the World Championships on the mountain bike, too. You know, it’s like, flat tires all the time, not the right day the day of the Worlds. So to have everything work out correctly—in his hometown, at the World Championships—was pretty spectacular. As an athlete anybody knows that to have that happen is pretty rare, to really hit all cylinders at the right time, on a course like that. It wasn’t a mountain finish, even though it was hilly. You could see his breakaway went on the downhill and then he was strong enough to drop those two guys uphill. But still, it wasn’t a very long climb and it was so close. So to make that happen was amazing. I’m really happy for him.

DM: It seems these days there’s lots of talk about what pro cyclists are eating and drinking to get an edge. At least some Garmin-Slipstream riders, such as Christian Vande Velde, have gluten-free or anti-inflammatory diets. What’s your diet like?

TD: Well, I’ve figured out certain things and don’t really want to share it with the world. [Laughs] One of the things that’s great about our team that’s not traditional is we do invest a lot of time and resources into making the guys go fast other than just show up to race and perform well. I think the team thinks, Okay, well, if the racers have all the tools at home and tools of training, then they’ll be able to come to the races and get the results we want. And one of those tools is having the proper diet. Allen Lim is a big part of the team’s diet program, and he’s done a great job setting things up.

Also, our chiropractor, Kevin Reichlin, he’s worked a lot with this company Zone, the Zone Diet, the Barry Sears diet. He has the anti-inflammatory diet, so the team just does a real good job making sure that this diet is available to us, makes sure we have all the Zone products and all the information that we need to make it happen. Then, when we’re at the races, they make sure we have the diet. A lot of time it’s easier at home to have the perfect diet, but when you go away to the races it’s more difficult. It’s really hard to get the right food, so I think they’ve done a great job bringing it home to us and making sure we have it at the races to perform consistently.

Read part 3 of the Tom Danielson interview here.

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