Team Garmin: A first for Zabriskie as Garmin repeats at Tour of Missouri

Team Garmin-Slipstream’s Dave Zabriskie, a favorite of fans of all ages, has done a lot of things in his cycling career. He’s captured a stage at all three grand tours – Italy, France and Spain – and is the only American to do so. He’s won five U.S. National time trial championships – including his most recent, which was his fourth in a row. He’s a businessman and philanthropist, launching “Yield to Life” to promote safety for cyclists. He’s a superhero, morphing into Captain America for every time trial to embody just one of the comic-book figures he loves. But until today, he had never won a stage race. Notice we said: Until today.

In front of thousands of fans gathered in downtown Kansas City, Dave and his Team Garmin crew controlled the seven circuits of the final stage of the Tour of Missouri, and in the end, Zabriskie was the champion of the race that teammate Christian Vande Velde won last year here in the heartland. While Christian’s victory tour began in Kansas City, Dave’s finished up here in the backyard of Garmin International’s headquarters, to the delight of the many Garmin employees who came out to cheer the argyle armada. And even though Christian broke his hand in the opening stage and could have supported Dave by being here in spirit, he was here in person – meeting fans near the finish, taking pictures at every turn and in the end, honoring Dave on the podium with a bottle of wine that looked pretty heavy even for two healthy hands (so we assume Christian is healing nicely). The highlight was, as Christian put it, when “he kissed me podium girl style.” 

And although Dave, Christian and the rest of the Garmin crew have finished their work in the Midwest, they’re sticking around for an extra day. Tomorrow, just as they did last year around the Tour of Missouri, they’ll meet the Garmin employees who dream up, create and market the products such as the Edge 705 used on Team Garmin’s bikes. And when they’re done with a meet-and-greet and casual Q&A, Team Garmin will kit up and go for a 20-mile ride with their extended Garmin family (those of us more used to PowerPoint than a peloton).

The cameras were rolling the past few days (including when Chris Sutton won the opening stage at Tour of Britain) – and will be again on Monday – so be sure to check out the Team Garmin minisite, follow Jake’s Twitter feed (@JakesJournal), go to our our Flickr page and visit our YouTube channel for videos of Team Garmin and Edge 705.

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