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**Christian Vande Velde**
Personal information
Full name	Christian Vande Velde
Nickname	VDV, CVV
Date of birth	May 22, 1976 (age 33)
Country	United States
Height	1.80 m (5 ft 11 in)
Weight	69 kg (150 lb; 10.9 st)
Team information
Current team	Garmin-Slipstream
Discipline	Road
Role	Rider
Rider type	All-rounder
Professional team(s)1
1998–2003; 2004; 2005–2007; 2008–	US Postal; Liberty Seguros; Team CSC; Slipstream–Chipotle
Major wins
	Tour of Missouri (2008),; Giro d'Italia, 1 Stage (TTT); 2008 USA Cycling Professional Tour; Tour de Luxembourg (2006),; Eneco Tour of Benelux Mountains classification (2005),; Quatre Jours de Dunkerque Youth Classification (1999),; UCI World Cup Individual Pursuit (1999)
	Infobox last updated on:
	December 12, 2008 1 Team names given are those prevailing; at time of rider beginning association with that team.

Christian Vande Velde (born 22 May 1976 in Lemont, Illinois, U.S.) is an American professional road racing cyclist who currently rides for Garmin-Slipstream.^[1] The son of United States Bicycling Hall of Fame inductee John Vande Velde, Christian became professional in 1998 for US Postal.

He twice rode on the Tour de France team that brought Lance Armstrong to victory, in 1999 and 2001. In the 1999 Tour de France Vande Velde was for a time the leader of the youth classification; he did not complete the 2001 Tour de France. Christian Vande Velde moved to Liberty Seguros in 2004 and switched to Team CSC in 2005. During this time, he worked as a domestique, riding in support of varying team captains, even though the 2005 season saw Vande Velde taking chances of his own including a breakaway on 4th stage of the Eneco Tour of Benelux, which was eventually hampered when the peloton was led on a false route, meaning the riders of the breakaway had to wait for the peloton to get back on track, at which time the gap between the break and the peloton was reduced from six to four minutes with 43 kilometres to go.^[1]

In the 2006 Tour de France, he was a domestique on Team CSC for team captains Carlos Sastre and Fränk Schleck. Vande Velde was the best of the climbers in the team apart from Sastre and Schleck, whom he supported in the high mountain stages. On stage 16, he pulled for most of the early slopes of the Col de La Croix de Fer, after team-mates Sastre and Schleck attacked to put then race leader Floyd Landis under pressure. On stage 17 to Morzine, he again pulled for most of the day along with team-mate Jens Voigt and Matthias Kessler and Serhiy Honchar from T-Mobile.

With the team time trial win by Slipstream–Chipotle in Stage 1 of the 2008 Giro d'Italia, Vande Velde became the first American to wear the Maglia rosa since Andy Hampsten in 1988.^[2] Vande Velde finished the 2008 Tour de France in fourth place, 3'05" behind the winner Carlos Sastre and 17th in the Olympic road race in Beijing. In 2009 Vande Velde finished 8th in the overall standings for the Tour de France.

He and his wife Leah are the parents of Uma (3 years-old) and Madeline, born in February, 2009.^[3]