One American left – on the American team

In 2010 Matthew Busche worked alongside Lance Armstrong and six other Americans, at the RadioShack team. Now, Busche is home alone on the revamped (though still American) Trek Factory Racing team.

“It’s an honour in one sense to be the sole American, but I don’t think it exerts any extra pressure on me,” Busche told Cyclingnews at Trek Factory Racing’s presentation in Roubaix last week.

The twenty-eight-year-old rider has been in the game a number of years, but it was not before 2009, and his rapid rise from a local Wisconsin-based team, to being a teammate of Armstrong, that he came into his own.

Busche has done well in the American race during the last few years, and has been a contender in the Tour of Utah and Tour of California, with a number of strong top ten places. Last year he also did well in the Tour of Austria.

Even though he is twenty-eight-years-old Busche still feels new to the game, and he in fact made the change from collegiate athletics just six years ago.

“I’m still relatively new to the sport, so hopefully I’m not at my full potential,” he said. “It’s been slow over the four years I’ve raced already, but I have improved a little bit each year, and I’m hoping I can keep going in that direction.”

Busche acknowledges the difficulties in collecting the top prizes just yet, but still dreams of a podium in the Tour of California.

“I think I can get on the podium if I race well,” he said. “Racing is partly luck but also experience and being in the right place at the right time. If everything works out fine, if I avoid any crazy bad luck, if I stay alert and race well, then the podium is very realistic.”

“We don’t have a lot of true climbers, so assuming Andy and Fränk are going for it again, they’re going to need guys to help them in the mountains, so hopefully that adds to my chances to get there,” Busche said. “If I perform well in the beginning of the season, I’m hoping I can be there, but at the end of the day, it all comes down to the directors. I guess we’ll just have to see how it plays out.”