Jonathan Vaughters – “Everything fell into place!”

“This win was for everybody in the team. There are so many people that we have who have put so much extra into this. Everything counts. It’s the little details. It’s about going over and over and over everything again to make sure that everything was perfect – that we have the best tires, the fastest bikes… the tiniest little details that we’ve worked so hard to attain!
“We knew we did everything right. We knew we brought the right riders. We knew we had the right strategy on the day. But you need everything to go perfectly on the day and that’s what you get nervous about. Our job had been done correctly but I was just nervous about the unanticipated – a little dog running out in the middle of the road or some random act… whatever, you know, but we got it right!
“We were here on Monday and we rode this course six times. We worked on the order of riders – that was something that I spent a lot of sleepless nights thinking, ‘I want this guy here, this guy there…’ and it actually worked perfectly! When I was watching I was like, ‘Holy …it’s actually going to work!’
“Who am I? I’m just… whatever – a little kid from Colorado. But I’m living the dream. It was like, ‘Oh, look that worked right!’ And everything fell into place.
“We knew that Julian was going to be the weak link so we had him start and he burned his energy up first. I was hoping we’d get six or seven kilometers out of him but we got nine! Perfect. That worked. Then Tyler, because he’s not riding GC said, ‘It’s okay, I’ll be next…’ and he took some unbelievable turns from kilometer 10 to 15 and then he blew but each time they did it to precision, it was never disruptive to the team effort. The way I feel now is a mix of relief and excitement.”