Ryder on the storm

By Wayne Scanlan, The Ottawa Citizen July 24, 2010 8:47 AM

Canada's Ryder Hesjedal rides in a breakaway on July 6, 2010 in the 213 km and third stage of the 2010 Tour de France cycling race run between Wanze and Arenberg, northern France.

Photograph by: Lionel Bonaventure, AFP/Getty Images

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Meet Canadian cyclist Ryder Hesjedal, the overnight Tour de France sensation -- 15 years in the making.

For casual sporting fans in this country, Hesjedal is the guy with the uncommon last name, but the perfect given name -- Ryder "The Rider" -- who hails from Victoria, but seemingly came from nowhere to rise to the top 10 of the only bike race that matters to much of the world -- the illustrious Tour de France.

With two stages remaining in the 2010 Tour and the champion crowned Sunday, Hesjedal, riding for the U.S.-based Garmin-Transitions team, stands eighth heading into today's scheduled time trial and Sunday's ceremonial finale in Paris. Unless he crashes into a semi-naked spectator carrying a devil's pitchfork -- always a possibility in the French mountain stages, but less likely on these final days -- Hesjedal is assured of delivering the highest placing by a Canadian since the great Steve Bauer of Fenwick, Ont., was fourth in 1988.

On Friday, the Garmin-Transitions website headline told the story: "YES-jedal!" The previous day, Hesjedal completed yet another brilliant stage, finishing fourth on the famed Tourmalet summit, an experience Hesjedal described afterward as "beyond epic."

With a nod to their adopted Canadian, a rare cycling star in a country of hockey players, Garmin sells T-shirts featuring a red Maple Leaf and the slogan, "Ryder: Weight of a Nation."

At 6-2, Hesjedal is a big man on a bike, a strong overall rider, if not exactly built for dancing up mountain peaks.

After one alpine stage of the Tour, he happily joked he was keeping up with "riders half my size."

After a strong start, the Canadian has not wavered, perhaps surprising himself in just his third Tour de France.

"I feel like I'm getting stronger -- a few more days and I'm going to be real happy in Paris," Hesjedal said atop the Tourmalet.

Hesjedal's meteoric rise through the peloton during this three-week spectacle is a testament to his talent, his form, but also illustrates the good fortune a rider needs to succeed at the Tour. While several of his own teammates, including anointed team leader Christian Vande Velde, either crashed or faltered early in the race, Hesjedal escaped the mayhem of the early stages and churned out spectacular daily rides to become the de facto leader of Garmin-Transitions.

Vande Velde broke two ribs and was unable to get to the start line for Stage 3.

As Hesjedal's longtime trainer, Juerg Feldmann, said in a telephone interview from Victoria this week:

"If Vande Velde could ride, Ryder would be one of the top water carriers in the Tour de France. You need to have some luck."

Circumstances dictate role changes. Much like the third-line centre thrust into the spotlight when injuries strike a playoff hockey team, Hesjedal had what it took to seize an enormous opportunity. Feldmann predicts Hesjedal can become a top-three Tour rider "and if everything is perfect, he can win the Tour in a few years."

We'll see. Already, Hesjedal has raised the bar very high for himself, and at 29 -- he turns 30 this winter -- his next few years will be critical.

On Wednesday, Garmin-Transitions announced a contract extension for Hesjedal through 2013. Though the contract was actually signed before the Tour, the team took the opportunity to recognize Hesjedal's special abilities.

"I think, moving forward to next year's Tour, we can come here with two very strong GC (general classification) contenders," team director Matt White said, in an online chat, referring to Vande Velde and Hesjedal. "It's always good to have more strength in depth in the high mountains."

Smart move by Garmin to lock up a rider who is opening a lot of eyes in France this summer.

"I'm very happy with this team," Hesjedal told Tour reporters on the day of the contract announcement. "It's a big reason why I am here today. I'm the most focused I've ever been. I'm comfortable on this team. I've tried to step up a level each year. The team gave me that luxury to have that security."

In his heart, and then in his legs, Hesjedal knew what might be in this event. In his daily phone calls, and e-mails home to his family in B.C., he kept telling his mother how strong he felt.

"What amazes me is the freshness Ryder has at the start every morning," said colour analyst Paul Sherwen, during Thursday's Versus broadcast of Stage 17.

A sure sign a rider has made it: Legendary race broadcasters Phil Liggett and Sherwen stop by for a morning chat.

So, how did a Canadian get to be a contender among the best professionals of cycle-mad Europe? It's as rare as a hockey player from France contending for a Stanley Cup.

For Hesjedal, the road to the Tour de France took more than a few twists and turns, from an innocent start -- traipsing around on his bike to visit his boyhood pals in the Highlands of Victoria, mountain bike country.

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With an eight-hour time difference, the Tour de France comes painfully early to Canada's left coast. For Paige and Leonard Hesjedal, both employed with the capital regional district government of B.C., watching their son race in France can mean a 3:30 a.m., 4:30 a.m. or 5:30 a.m. start time, depending on the stage.

And it isn't just the Hesjedals paying attention. Ryder has made headlines across the country this month, especially in Victoria, where his riding pals sleepily venture down to the local bike shop at dawn, hours before the shop's usual opening time, to watch on TV as their buddy gives 'em heck overseas.

A natural athlete, big and strong, Ryder played the usual team sports of baseball (a pitcher), basketball, soccer and football, but not hockey, surprising considering his dad, Leonard, played junior hockey in Victoria and was said to have had the makings of a pro.

"We had a pond that froze a couple of times," says Ryder's mother, Paige, laughing. "Ryder tried it out, but I don't think he had the legs for hockey."

His parents didn't push him, quietly content to avoid the ritual 7 a.m. practices Canadian hockey families know too well. And, no, they didn't call their son "Ryder" because they thought he would make it as a cyclist. Be careful what you name your child, Paige says.

Initially, Ryder's bike was little more than a means of transport. Getting to a ball game in Langford, visiting pals in the Highlands, usually meant a long, hilly ride of 10 to 15 kilometres. In time, Hesjedal came to enjoy the ride as much as the sport to which he ventured.

Then, he saw his first poster for a local bike race.

"He has always been competitive," Paige says. "Once he figured out he could combine the two of them, that was it. He could race and ride the bike.

Lots of children dream of being pros, but with Ryder's focus, his parents believed he would make a career from sport.

"We didn't know it would be cycling, but we figured it would be something along this line," Paige says. "It could have been baseball, it could have been any (sport), because he always had that natural ability, that competitiveness."

Ryder liked the solo nature of cycling, at least in the early years before he became part of a large pro squad. On youth teams, he grew frustrated with players who weren't as serious about competing. A few special early coaches, nurturing sponsors and family support helped Ryder make a name for himself on the B.C. trails.

It's not like he had to go far for a challenge on two wheels.

"There were world-class trails half a kilometre from my house, and after school I would do two-to-three-hour rides on singletrack," Hesjedal told Canadian Cycling Magazine in a feature article this spring. "Now that I look back, what I did from 13 to 16 or 17 gave me the foundation and allowed me to get to that level."

The "level" he reached in mountain bike racing was basically the top of the mountain. A three-time Olympian for Canada, a World Cup winner and twice member of a world championship relay team (2001 and 2002), Hesjedal would have been an individual world champion if not for a questionable 2003 result by Filip Meirhaeghe of Belgium, who came from nowhere to take the gold medal from Hesjedal in the cross-country event. (A year later, Meirhaeghe was nailed for doping at a World Cup event, casting doubt on the authenticity of his victory over Hesjedal at the '03 worlds.)

Feldmann said Hesjedal was demoralized by the turn of events.

"That was the only time I can remember he was not happy with the result, despite having a personal best," Feldmann said. "He was already looking to the road as a profession."

In 2004, Hesjedal joined the Discovery Team, featuring Lance Armstrong, an important introduction into the world of road racing as a pro.

"It was a different world for him," Paige says, "bigger and better, with endless challenges. The Tour was the ultimate goal."

Two years ago, Hesjedal became the first Canadian to compete in the Tour de France since Nepean's Gord Fraser in 1997. Hesjedal played a support role in Vande Velde's fifth-place finish. Last year, Bradley Wiggins got fourth, with Hesjedal again as a team domestique.

Already, though, there were signs of bigger things. At the 2009 Tour of Spain, Hesjedal won the 12th stage, becoming the first Canadian rider since Bauer to win a stage at one of cycling's Grand Tour events.

He came into the Tour de France having had a strong spring season, then stunned everyone with his Tour performance, as high as third at one point in the race.

These are wild times in the Hesjedal household in Victoria. There are kitchen and bathroom renovations, plus an addition under way, while Paige and Leonard keep one eye on a television charting their son's path through France.

Both Hesjedal children, Ryder and younger sister Kyla, have recently announced wedding engagements.

("Maybe that's what's making him go so fast," Paige jokes, of Ryder's marriage proposal to an American woman from Colorado). No rush setting a date, Paige has told her children.

"I said nobody even think about getting married until our house is finished."

Ryder lives in Europe most of the year, and trains in Maui and Victoria.

In September, he will ride in Canada as a pro, when the UCI has stops in Quebec City and Montreal, a rare chance for Canada's Tour de France hero to stop by and take a bow.

Subscribers can read previous columns by Wayne Scanlan at ottawacitizen.com. He can be reached at [e-mail] .

Hesjedal keeps his spot

The high drama of the Pyrenees from earlier in the week gave way to the relative predictability of the flat wine-producing countryside Friday in the Tour de France.

Canadian Ryder Hesjedal maintained his eighth-place overall standing in the 18th stage, a 198-kilometre sprint. Riders didn't face the steep climbs, but this test of stamina and perseverance is never easy.

"It's still wearing on the body," said Victoria's Hesjedal, who has cycled 3,487 kilometres over more than 88 accumulated hours in the 2010 Tour. "It was a flat stretch (Friday), but it still seemed like a long way to do. By now, we're all anxious to get ... into Paris (the final stage) on Sunday."

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