tejay van garderen

12:03 PST 62km/151.4km to go
We've got T-mobile sitting behind the Discovery team - there are a few Gerolsteiner riders up there, too. We've gotten word that another rider for the US National team has pulled out, this one is Tejay Van Garderen (USA National team) - that leaves two guys riding. No word on why they're pulling out, but the team is mostly young riders, and the furious start to this race today might have simply been the last straw for their tired legs.

As told by Tejay to Marcel

The wear of racing at this level is starting to show. Stage 2 was a relatively uneventful stage with the pack cruising along at a blistering pace to keep the breaks from accumulating too much time.
As they entered Sacramento the sprinters teams had the pack strung out around the finishing circuits. Most of the guys on the national team were somewhere mid pack. Noel kept telling Tejay to move up incase the pack split; that way he would lose no time. That proved much easier said than done. “…I have been in some fast crits in my life but this was just a whole new level of fast, moving up was not an option…staying on barely was…”