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Dean rides into 2009 history books |
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Dean completes the final Grand Tour stage of 2009, #63 (c)Slipstream Sports
Add to this a handful of one and two day events between tours, his early start with the Tour Down Under in January, plus a busy spring classics season, and you can see the magnitude of Dean's 2009 race season. In all but a couple of those 63 pro tour stages, Dean was working for others. Although he would dearly like the chance to have team support for his own Grand Tour sprint win, Dean was racing either to help Tyler Farrar in the sprint, or when Farrar wasn't there, tirelessly performing domestique duties carting water bottles in the mountain stages while he could. Despite bad crashes, road rash, a dodgy strapped knee and even a bullet fired into his finger, Dean fought on. In this Vuelta there were mountain stages where ten riders abandoned each day. Dean's Garmin Slipstream team was whittled down to just four riders, Dean was one of them, and he's a sprinter. Not who you expect as the last man standing. When you consider Dean was the only rider in the entire pro peloton to finish all three Grand Tours this year you can start to see how much of an achievement this is. David Millar, who won the Vuelta penultimate stage time trial, gave credit to his "kiwi guy" teammate. "What makes this great is that I can share my success with my team. Kiwi Guy is sitting here next to me right now having a beer, he has done 62 grand tour stages this year, 63 tomorrow. From May 9 until now he has on average raced every other day… that is our sport. That is Kiwi Guy! He is so sick and tired and finished and yet he hasn’t given up," Millar wrote on an update for his team website. Dean's wife Carole has taken over her husband's report on JulianDean.co.nz as Dean hasn't had the time or energy these last few stages. "He IS the walking dead right now. He has an ever-growing list of 'ailments' which now include mouth ulcers, cold sores and the flu - all on top of his sore neck, skinless back and the hole in his knee (from his crash in Stage 4)," she wrote. "How he is still racing is beyond the comprehension of a non-athlete such as myself, but why he is still racing is something I can understand and have fully supported even if it does mean the boys and I will be left with trying to 'rebuild' Julian from the squillions of broken pieces that'll get sent home to us on Monday!" Dean is notoriously hard on himself. He wants to win, he feels he can win and he doesn't like coming up short. Although the result sheets don't show the wins Dean so strongly seeks, I think Garmin Slipstream would call him a winner, and I know New Zealand does too. Once Julian has had time to heal his physical wounds and restock himself mentally, RoadCycling.co.nz will call him for his views on this mammoth season. Homepage photo: Dean at the Tour de France (c) Brenton Vasilleroy for RoadCycling.co.nz
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Sep 21st, 09. Today Julian Dean became the only rider to finish all three Grand Tour of 2009. That's 63 stages and over 10,000kms of the hardest racing in the pro circuit. That's legendary.