2005

Pasing The Baton
May 20, 2005, 12:00

From that point on things really began to progress. Vaughters got a ride alongside Lance Armstrong in the US Postal Service team and helping him take two of his six Tour de France victories. Besides his role as a highly-valued domestique, the Colorado rider also racked up some pretty fine results himself, including two stage wins and second overall in the Dauphiné Libéré, 3rd in the Tour of the Mediterranean and a Tour de France team time trial stage win with the Credit Agricole squad in 2001. He also set a new record for the ascent of Mont Ventoux during the 1999 Dauphiné, beating the long-standing mark set by famed French climber Charly Gaul many years previously.

Vaughers retired early from the European peloton in 2002, stopping before his thirtieth birthday, but he looks back on his career with justifiable satisfaction. ‘Between 1999 and 2001 I had a good run, when I was finishing pretty consistently in the top five, top ten of the week-long stage races,’ he says. ‘I was second in the Dauphiné Libéré in 1999 and I would knock off a time trial win here and there. Those were definitely the best years. I was really enjoying it then.’

‘The big limiter in my career was that in the three week stage races, I was never able to truly recover after seven or eight days of competition. My legs would just get worse and worse and worse. As a result, I never really got to show my true climbing abilities in the mountains of the Tour de France because by the time we got to the mountains, I would already have one foot in the grave.’

Vaughters’ big career goal of completing the Tour was foiled on four occasions, most notably in 2001 when a bee sting caused a severe allergic reaction. His face swelled up grotesquely, preventing him from seeing properly and forcing him to pull out during that stage. A cortisone injection would have quickly solved the problem but, ironically, cycling’s rigorous anti-doping rules prevented him from having this intervention.

‘The Tour was pretty tough on me, all right,’ he says. ‘I crashed out twice. And once I had bronchitis and once I had that bee sting. I always say to people that I’ve had had wonderful luck in life, but I had horrible luck in the Tour de France.’

‘Despite the disappointments at the Tour, overall my career represented a great ten years of my life. I struggled a lot but I also had a lot of really good moments. I look back at it fondly. I accomplished what I set out to do. A lot of people thought that I might have been able to achieve more than I did and that I might have stopped a little early, but I knew that for me, mentally, it was the right time to call it a day.’

Vaughters went into real estate following his retirement but, although he was mentally jaded with racing, the bike bug refused to let go. He founded the TIAA – CREF team in 2003 in order to help young American riders progress, and has worked hard in the role of directeur sportif ever since.

‘I put the team together in the last year of my career, when I was racing on the US circuit,’ he says. ‘It was a much smaller operation then. The first year I had a little real estate business that I had set up before I retired, so to begin I funded the team out of the money that was earned from that business. It was a roundabout deal that I had going on, but I thought it was a fun thing to do. It also helped me to promote my company.’

‘But then it just started growing and people became more interested in it. There were some companies that I had good connections with in the upper levels. There have been a lot of new fans for cycling in America created because of Lance Armstrong’s success and, slowly but surely, some of these people are reaching out beyond being just a Lance Armstrong fan and they are starting to become a cycling fan.’

‘Then, the question started being asked: “What happens after Lance is gone, what happens after Bobby Julich is gone?” In the end, there were a couple of companies that were visionary and philanthropic enough to fund a team that is going to at least attempt to answer that question. And that’s what we are about.’

Although he was burnt out when he stopped racing, being involved in this dimension of the sport has preserved his passion for cycling. ‘I had enough of competition myself, but it is funny… When I am watching my riders race and when they are doing a good job, or even when they are not having the greatest day, I really get excited for them. I still get goosebumps on the arms, when they are about to win or are doing well.’

‘That was something I had definitely for most of my career as a rider, but I had lost in the last couple of years. It is nice to be able to rekindle that, but in a different role.’

Asked about his motivations as a directeur sportif, Vaughters says that his aim is to help as many riders as possible to go on to secure ProTour contracts. Should the sponsorship become available, he’d jump at the chance to set up this type of top-level team himself but, whatever happens with that dream, he insists the most important thing is to retain the development squad.

‘The team plays a vital role in that it is helping to develop the next wave of riders, and for that reason it is very much needed,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to say it is a school, because it is not real grass-roots level; it is a fairly high-level squad. But it is kind of the last stepping stone to getting all the way onto a top level team.’

‘We’ve had some pretty good results to date. We have got the current US national Espoir (under 23) champion on the team, Ian McGregor. That is probably our biggest win thus far. We also won the under 23 jersey in the Tour of Georgia, the Grand Prix Cicliste de Beauce plus a number of other stage races around the States.’

According to Vaughters, McGregor is likely to be on the squad for the FBD Insurance Rás. So too Blake Caldwell, a twelve-time junior national champion in the United States. ‘The two guys are very talented,’ he says. ‘Blake is probably the most accomplished junior rider to ever come out of the US. And Ian can win a stage for sure. I have no doubt in my mind, because he is an enormous talent. He has higher VO2 max numbers than Lance Armstrong. He is really an impressive athlete, but is real up and down right now. One day he is great and the next day he is bad. What he needs to do is build a base, and that is what riding a race such as the Rás is all about.’

‘As for the others, the team that goes to the Rás will be the younger up-and-comers. I think they are probably the most talented guys of the team but whether they are experienced enough to truly pull off an overall win remains to be seen. It will be the first eight-day stage race that many of them will do in their lives, and so the race will be a perfect test.’

Vaughers is hoping that the riders will come to the race and each ride to the best of their abilities, learning from the experience, getting stronger and moving towards successful careers. In ways, that scenario would echo his own path of progression, having ridden the race twelve years ago.