page_title: 2011 Garmin–Cervélo season
section_title: Stage races
hierarchical_section_title: 2011 Garmin–Cervélo season / Stage races
caption_attribution_description: Cameron Meyer at the prologue of the Tour de Romandie 2011
context_page_description: The 2011 season for the Garmin–Cervélo cycling team began in January at the Tour Down Under and ended in October at the Noosa Grand Prix. As a UCI ProTeam, they were automatically invited and obligated to send a squad to every event in the UCI World Tour.
  For 2011, the team added Cervélo as a major co-sponsor, after they had, for two seasons, fronted their own professional team, the Cervélo TestTeam. Seven riders from Cervélo TestTeam joined Garmin-Cervélo for 2011, perhaps chief among them reigning world champion Thor Hushovd.
  The team took 26 victories in 2011, 25 of which officially count. After having raced the Tour de France for the last three years without any victories, they took four stage wins and the team award at the 2011 Tour. Also a first for the team, they held the yellow jersey for a week with Hushovd. They also placed a rider in the top ten overall – Tom Danielson in ninth. They also took stage wins at both of the season's other Grand Tours, though their Giro d'Italia was marred by the death of Wouter Weylandt, a close friend of Garmin-Cervélo rider Tyler Farrar.
context_section_description: The team entered the Tour Down Under with a squad led by Farrar, who sought to win the race overall. After failing to figure in the finish to stage 1, Farrar was conclusively ruled out of any overall contention due to a stage 2 crash. At this point, the team specifically turned to Cameron Meyer for their overall chances, and he delivered. In stage 4, Meyer and Wilson both made the day's breakaway, and in a happening rare in the Tour Down Under's history, the breakaway stayed away. Back in the peloton, their teammates rode at the front of the group to try to thwart the plans of Omega Pharma–Lotto, Team Sky, and HTC–Highroad to get another mass finish. Meyer won the stage, with Wilson fading to fourth toward the end. The break's time gap over the main field gave Meyer the overall race leadership. It was the first time in his career that Meyer had ever been a race leader, and with the race's queen stage to Willunga ahead, he was nervous of being able to hold the lead. In the Willunga stage, Meyer finished with the leading group, holding onto his race lead, though it was narrowed to 8 seconds due to fellow stage winner Matthew Goss getting bonus seconds at the finish line for his third place. In the Adelaide criterium to close the race, Meyer preserved his lead, emerging as Tour champion. Goss, however, mounted a spirited challenge, winning bonus time not only at the finish but also in the first intermediate sprint, coming up two seconds short in the final overall standings.
  As he had been in his two seasons with Cervélo TestTeam, Haussler was active in the Tour of Qatar in February. After finishing second to Tom Boonen in stage 1, Haussler won stage 2, outkicking Daniele Bennati at the finish, and moved within one second of Boonen in the overall classification. Though he had won the event's points classification in each of the last two years, this was Haussler's first ever stage win at the Tour of Qatar. In stage 3, Boonen flatted at a critical moment when the peloton was at its top speed and lost three minutes, leaving the top of the overall standings wide open. Haussler picked up a second consecutive stage win in Mesaieed, and in so doing he also moved into the overall race leadership. He credited the win to the team treating the third stage like a one-day classic, while also mentioning that HTC–Highroad's Bernhard Eisel performed an effective leadout for all the sprinters at the finish. Haussler lost the overall lead in stage 4, as HTC–Highroad's Mark Renshaw took the stage win and opened a six-second gap with his time bonus at the finish. Haussler was a distant ninth in the event's final stage, meaning the bonus time on offer went wanting and he finished second overall, though winning the points classification for the third year in a row. Similarly continuing Cervélo TestTeam's legacy, the squad won the teams classification as their antecedents also had in each of the previous two editions. Haussler stated that he was pleasantly surprised by his early-season form and hoped it would portend for Milan–San Remo and the Tour of Flanders. At Paris–Nice in March, Haussler won the points classification without winning any stage. He had stage finishes in every position from second through fifth, however. At the concurrent Tirreno–Adriatico, Farrar won the first road race stage after an effective leadout from Hushovd. The next stage was also flat, and Hushovd again performed a leadout that was strong in form, but it was perhaps too strong this time. The world champion opened up a slight gap on Farrar in the final kilometer, and left him to sprint for the line from 600 meters (2,000 ft) out. Farrar lost out at the last moment to Saxo Bank–SunGard's Juan José Haedo.
  Martin was the beneficiary at the Volta a Catalunya of an injury sustained by Team RadioShack's Levi Leipheimer. The American had occupied a podium spot, second, before the flat final stage, but a re-occurrence of an abdominal injury left him physically unable to complete the race. Leipheimer's withdrawal moved Martin onto the event's final podium in third. Kreder clai
caption: Cameron Meyer, pictured here in his special jersey as Australian national time trial champion, took the overall victory at the Tour Down Under, the first UCI World Tour event of the season.
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