Svein Tuft's David and Goliath ride

Wow, wow, wow. What a ride by Svein in the time trial. Did you see it? Wow. Seventh - the only rider in the top ten not on a ProTour team. Sitting in the medal postions of the leader board untill the very end of the final wave of top seeded riders. Ahead of all riders from standout cycling nations like: France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Russia and Denmark. Here's a nugget of perspective to show the scale of Svein's David vs. the giants acheivement

Svein has slowly and progressively developed on this team over the last four years. Symmetrics in contrast to a rider like Cancellera -who won gold- operates for the entire year on about 1/5th of what CSC spends on Cancellera's salary alone.

Here's some more numbers on Svein's incredible ride, when you look at the top 30 riders in the Olympic TT:

• 23 riders were from Pro Tour teams
• 4 riders were from Pro Continental teams
• Only 3 were from Continental teams
• The next placed Continental rider was Santiago Botero - he was 25th. He's a former Pro Tour rider and former Time Trial World Champion and winner of TT stages in the Tour de France

We are simply awestruck by what Svein's achieved and couldn't be happier him.

				TEAM			ProTour	ProConti Conti
1 Fabian Cancellara (Sui)	CSC			x
2 Gustav Erik Larsson (swe)	CSC			x
3 Levi Leipheimer (USA)		Astana			x
4 Alberto Contador (Esp)	Astana			x
5 Cadel Evans 	(Aus)		Lotto			x
6 Samuel Sánchez  (Esp)		Euskadi			x
7 Svein Tuft (Can)		Symmetrics		 		  x
8 Michael Rogers (Aus)		Columbia		x
9 Stef Clement 	(Ned)		Bouygues Télécom	x
10 Robert Gesink (Ned)		Rabobank		x
11 Stephen Cummings(GB)		Barloworld  		 	x
12 David Zabriskie (USA)	Garmin				x
13 Stefan Schumacher (Ger)	Gerolsteiner		x
14 Bert Grabsch (Ger)		Columbia		x
15 Vincenzo Nibali (It)		Liqigas			x
16 Ryder Hesjedal (Can)		Garmin			 	x
17 Rein Taaramae (Est)		Cofidis			x
18 Vladimir Karpets (Rus)	Caisse D'espargne	x
19 Chris Anker Sørensen 	CSC			x
20 Denis Menchov (Russia)   	Rabobank		x
21 Vasil Kiryienka (Belarus)  	Tinkoff				x
22 Marzio Bruseghin (Italy)   	Lampre                  x
23 Kim Kirchen (Luxembourg)   	Columbia		x
24 Andrey Mizurov (Kazakhstan)  Astana			x
25 Santiago Botero (Colombia)  	Rock Racing				 x
26 Maxime Monfort (Belgium)   	Cofidis			x
27 Laszlo Bodrogi (Hungary)  	Credit Agricole		x
28 Simon Spilak (Slovenia)   	Lampre			x
29 Matej Jurco (Slovakia)    	Milram			x
30 Matias Medici (Argentina)    Scott-Marcondes			         x

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 8:47 pm and is filed under Olympics, Svein Tuft, Symmetrics Pro Cycling Team. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.