Henk Vogels’
Diary, Stage 7, the final stage
I think Toyota-United gained a huge amount of respect this week, as far as international racing is concerned. With
Ivan Dominguez being as quick as he is, obviously he is someone who is very dangerous at the finish.
I think the best teams in the world looked to us for support this week, too. We had complete
faith in Ivan, but things didn’t work out as well as we might have expected. But for him to finish fourth in two stages
and fifth in another – plus Ivan Stevic’s win – is a great result. The team has stepped up to an international
level just in the 16 months or so it’s been that we’ve been around. Stevic winning one of the king stages was
very impressive, as well as us riding as a strong team all week.
We said coming into the Tour de Georgia that our whole goal was stage wins and we worked whole-heartededly
for that. So that’s why we had nobody in the overall. I think it worked out for us, because there were only two stages
on the road with one time trial and we got one of those seven and we were very competitive on all the others. We controlled
the race with CSC and Discovery. It was a good week for us.
I’ve been away 10 weeks in a row, so now I get time to rest and recovery and make some
headway for Philadelphia, which is the next big race for us. I’ll take a couple weeks off, then do the two races in
Arkansas (Joe Martin Stage Race and the Tri-Peaks Challenge) in May before getting ready for Philly.
