Tour de France: Cannondale-Garmin continues three-pronged attack after mixed first week

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Ryder Hesjedal (Cannondale-Garmin) puts in an attack(Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)

Cannondale-Garmin came into the Tour de France hoping that sharing the pressure of success over multiple riders would safeguard them from the pitfalls that the race more often than not throws up. Andrew Talansky, Dan Martin and Ryder Hesjedal have all been charged with shouldering the team's GC ambitions, but a challenging first week has seen favourites emerge among the trio.

Hesjedal's hopes have all but gone after he shed more than 20 minutes when he missed the split on stage 5. Martin is just under eight minutes down on the race lead but it is Talansky in 20th at less than three minutes back that has been the team's best performer so far. Considering the action that we've seen in the opening six days though, the team are not ready to put all their eggs into one basket just yet.

Born in Ireland to a cycling family and later moved to the Isle of Man, so there was no surprise when I got into the sport. Studied sports journalism at university before going on to do a Masters in sports broadcast. After university I spent three months interning at Eurosport, where I covered the Tour de France. In 2012 I started at Procycling Magazine, before becoming the deputy editor of Procycling Week. I then joined Cyclingnews, in December 2013.