Tejay van Garderen has announced his retirement from professional cycling after the US National Championships.
The 32-year-old will ride on June 20 his final race as a pro in Knoxville, Tennessee.
“I’m extremely proud of everything I accomplished in my career. I know personally how hard I worked to achieve what I’ve achieved, and I know what level I was able to hit. Results aside, I know that I got the best out of myself”, said the American.
After completing his U23 period in the jersey of the Rabobank development team, Van Garderen started his professional career in 2010 at HTC-Columbia. From 2012 to 2018 he raced for BMC, and since 2019 he has been riding for EF Education-Nippo.
“The honest truth is that I don’t feel super effective as a bike racer anymore. Once your ability starts to be less than it was, you have to find a way to make yourself effective. I was really motivated by the rise of Hugh Carthy, and I wanted to be able to mentor him and help him. I said, ‘Okay, I’m still a good climber. Maybe I can stay with him in the high mountains and give him support.’ I’m not skilled enough to be like those cobbled classics guys who are able to shepherd their leader through all the tricky sections”.
“We have guys like Jens Keukeleire and Alberto Bettiol who are much more effective at that than I could ever be. But the truth is I wasn’t able to just climb into a group of the 20 best anymore, to be able to give a leader like Hugh support in the high mountains. So I was riding around thinking, well, what do I do? How am I effective in the race? And if I really took a good, honest look in the mirror, I said, “Well, if you have eight people to fill a roster, I could name eight people that would serve a purpose better than I could serve that purpose.”
