That Danish Team Sure Speaks to L.A.

The CSC cycling team is registered in Denmark and coached by a Dane who’s a former Tour de France champion.

It includes a German who will wear the yellow jersey as the Tour’s overall leader today when Stage 10 leaves for the high mountains.

Yet the team’s best rider is from Italy.

Its best support rider is from Glenwood, Colo.

Its biggest fan might be a 17-year-old from Huntsville, Ala.

And its sponsor is an information technology company that has a workforce of 79,000 in 80 countries, did $14.1 billion in business last year, was founded 46 years ago and is based in ... El Segundo.

“I guess you could say CSC is Los Angeles’ local team,” said Bobby Julich, the rider from Colorado who is sixth overall in the Tour. “But cycling’s pretty much a worldwide game right now.”

CSC is riding high as Week 2 of the three-week trip begins. Jens Voigt, a popular German veteran, gleefully took the yellow jersey from six-time defending champion Lance Armstrong on Sunday.

Armstrong says his team, Discovery Channel -- based in the U.S. but with riders from six countries -- was happy to give it up.

“Let somebody else have the pressure,” Armstrong said.

But Bjarne Riis, the Danish coach who was a popular Tour winner in 1996, said he wasn’t playing Armstrong’s game.

“He’s the one who has won six Tours,” Riis said. “He’s the man who has to win. He cannot say he just gave the jersey away so we can do all the work. We’re not jumping at that one.”

Up in Courchevel, where today’s 119.6-mile stage ends, there’s a gathering of about 140 CSC employees and clients who will watch the stage finish from privileged spaces. Employees are sent e-mail each day and are allowed to purchase spots on the CSC trip to the Tour.

Jerry Scott, vice president of business development, said 75% of the applicants were Americans. CSC is usually referred to as a Danish team, and Scott said that was too bad.

“I think the U.S. interest is growing the fastest,” he said.

Scott is a marketer at heart. He’s thrilled at Armstrong’s success, even though Armstrong rides for another team.

“Lance brings people’s interest to the sport,” Scott said. “That can only be good for us. If he wins again, great. It helps serve our purpose.”

That purpose, Scott says, is to make CSC better known all over the world. It ranks third to IBM and EDS in its field.

CSC got into cycling five years ago, when its Denmark subsidiaries asked to become a co-sponsor of the team Riis, a Danish hero, wanted to develop.

“We took it to improve our Danish market,” Scott said. “It served our purpose well, and now we’ve become a truly global program. So I’m all in favor of Lance continuing to win because, yeah, it helps us too.”

Scott was speaking from an office in London.

In a meeting room at a suburban Grenoble hotel, Julich was saying the same thing in a different way.

Armstrong, Julich said, is showing strong legs. He might be in third place overall after leading for five days, Julich said, “but Lance still has at least a minute lead on all his toughest challengers.”

“To get that back sounds like a monstrous test and to actually get ahead of him is a totally different thing,” Julich added. “So I definitely think Lance is licking his lips for Phase 2 of the Tour.”

So is Julich, but for different reasons. In 1998 he was a surprise third-place finisher. Armstrong was still recovering from cancer and it seemed the intense, emotional young Julich was on the verge of greatness.

“I struggled with my confidence,” Julich said. “Maybe I tried too hard. I think I got too much too soon and I didn’t handle it well.”

Julich never finished so high again in the Tour. When the 2003 season ended, he didn’t have a contract and he thought he would retire.

“I started watching cycling when Greg LeMond was winning,” Julich said. “I remember the first year I watched, Bernard Hinault was doing so great and I heard him say that he was a Scorpio and that he was going to retire when he was 32. I thought, ‘I’m a Scorpio. That’s what I want to do. I want to win the Tour de France and then retire when I’m 32.’ ”

But on his 32nd birthday, Julich was offered a job by Riis.

Riis had a new young cyclist, Italy’s Ivan Basso. Riis thought Julich could help Basso, who was great in the mountains, Riis said, but hadn’t learned the other parts of the Tour, especially the art of riding the time trial. It took Julich about a minute to say yes.

Last year, he won a bronze medal at the Olympics. Over the winter, Julich became the first American to win the prestigious Paris-Nice race.

And Basso has become an avid pupil.

“Bobby rides, I watch,” Basso said. “It’s good.”

Julich said: “I wish I had the legs two or three years ago that I have now. I wish I had the same belief in myself. But I’ve gotten that from Bjarne and everything happens for a reason.

“When I was young, I didn’t have a good enough team around me, and I didn’t know what I should know. Now I have a great team. If I wasn’t going to be 34 in November, I’d dream about being on the podium here again.

“But it’s a different time. Now I’m riding for Basso. I’m too old to worry about anything else.”

More than 100 miles away, Tom Fessenden was happily climbing off a Trek bike CSC had provided for employees who had come for the Tour.

Fessenden, 17, was supposed to take this trip with his father, Russell Hunter, who works for CSC’s defense group in Huntsville, Ala.

When the opportunity to take the trip was offered, Hunter told his son he had to earn his trip. So Fessenden, who’d graduated from high school a semester early, worked two jobs -- one as a bicycle mechanic and one as a pizza deliveryman. About a month ago, Hunter learned that, of all things, work would keep him from France. Fessenden convinced his dad that he was mature enough to take the trip alone.

So last Saturday, Fessenden took a plane from Huntsville to Detroit to Amsterdam to Geneva. He arrived in Courchevel Sunday and on Monday was riding part of the Tour de France course. He follows Armstrong, and he’s rooting for Basso. He took up cycling because he admired Armstrong and because his father’s company sponsored a team.

Now that team threatens the stranglehold Armstrong has held on this race.

“I can’t lose,” Fessenden said. “I’m a fan for life.”

The boy from Alabama loves the cyclist from Italy who rides for the team from Denmark that’s sponsored by the company from El Segundo.

“That’s what we love,” Scott said. “Everybody gets to know us.”