Tom Danielson

Tom Danielson
	Tom Danielson 2006
To person
Date of birth	March 13, 1978
nation	United States
discipline	Street
Driver type	Mountain riders
Team (s)
2002 ; 2003 ; 2004 ; 2005–2007 ; 2008–2015	Mercury Cycling Team ; Saturn Cycling Team ; Fassa Bortolo ; Discovery Channel ; Garmin
Most important successes
	Tour de Georgia 2005 ; a stage Vuelta a España 2006
	Last updated: November 20, 2016

Tom Danielson (born March 13, 1978 in East Lyme , Connecticut ) is a retired American cyclist . He was placed in the top ten of a Grand Tour four times and was banned twice for doping .

Career

Tom Danielson began his career in 2002 with the Mercury Cycling Team , with which the Tour of Qinghai Lake won the same year . After he won the Tour de Langkawi in 2003 , he signed a contract with the Italian team Fassa Bortolo in 2002 , but where he could not achieve any success.

The following year he moved to Discovery Channel , the team of Lance Armstrong , who was then already six of his seven later because of doping but knew Tour de France won -Siege. Danielson won the overall ranking of the Tour de Georgia in April 2005 ahead of Levi Leipheimer and Floyd Landis . In the further course of the season he reached seventh place overall in the Vuelta a España .

In 2006 he secured the overall victory of the Tour of Austria . At the Vuelta a España 2006 he was able to celebrate his greatest success so far when he won a difficult mountain stage through a successful breakaway attempt before the eventual overall winner Alexandre Vinokourow . In addition, he finished sixth overall at the end of the tour .

In 2008 Tom Danielson moved to the Professional Continental Team Slipstream-Chipotle , which was licensed as a ProTeam under the name Garmin-Slipstream in the 2009 season . He was able to build on his previous good performances at the Tour of Spain in 2010 when he consistently performed well and finished the race in eighth place.

After Danielson finished the Tour of California in 2011 in third place behind Chris Horner and Levi Leipheimer and the Tour de Suisse in ninth, team boss Vaughters called into the squad for the Tour de France . After the nominal team captains Christian Vande Velde and Ryder Hesjedal lost a lot of time, Danielson took over the role of captain and finished eighth in the overall standings on his tour debut at the age of 33 and won the team standings with his team .

On October 10, 2012, Danielson was banned from the USADA for 6 months for doping . He had been a key witness in the course of the investigation against his former teammate Lance Armstrong and the team testified against him. The overall victory of the Tour of Austria 2006 was revoked.

After his suspension expired, Danielson won the Tour of Utah in 2013 and 2014 .

In July 2015, Danielson tested positive for synthetic testosterone . In October 2016 he was banned for doping retrospectively for four years. Danielson has accepted the sentence, said the US anti-doping agency USADA . The ban expires on August 3, 2019.