Back in January, at the official unveiling of the 2008 Slipstream-Chipotle team in Boulder, Colorado, Jonathan Vaughters made a profound request. The former pro racer turned team general manager asked fans and the media to remember that cycling is a hard sport. He asked them to understand that to fail is human. And most importantly he asked them to look beyond the traditional metrics of success, and judge his Slipstream team by a different set of criteria.

“If we really want to get doping out of cycling, then we have to win within the context of the human body,” Vaughters explained to an enraptured crowd. “That means some days are going to be great and some are not. I know people want to cheer for winners. But what we are saying is that as a cycling fan you have a choice to either get wrapped up in the mania and not think about what you are seeing. Or you can look at things more critically, and realize that cycling is a hard sport and that you can’t win all the time.”

That statement cut to the core of what Slipstream is all about. Of course they want to win races – and already this year they have. But no less important is the team’s mission to help the sport break free of its unruly past. They’ve hired riders and staff that share their fair-play-first ideals and instituted a revolutionary internal anti-doping testing regimen that is among the most stringent in the sport.

If early returns are any indication, the plan is working. The team’s squeaky clean image has stood strong, and they’ve managed to pull off a handful of major successes. The biggest came on the first day of May’s Giro d’Italia, the Italian equivalent of the Tour de France. The three-week grand tour opened with a team time trial, a true measure of overall team strength.

Despite Slipstream’s status as a triple-A pro continental team as opposed to a major league ProTour squad, Slipstream ruled the day, beating out its better funded – and presumably more talented – ProTour competitors. That put longtime American pro Christian Vande Velde in the race’s pink leader’s jersey, a feat repeated just one other time in the race’s lengthy history.

“That was a pretty amazing moment,” said Slipstream’s Mike Friedman, who will be among eight Slipstream riders that descend on Pennsylvania in early June to contest the Commerce Bank Triple Crown of Cycling. “It showed that what we are trying to do as a team is really possible.”

Friedman will be joined in the Keystone State by fellow American teammates, Tyler Farrar, Steven Cozza, Jason Donald and Will Frischkorn, along with Swede Magnus Backstedt, Aussie Chris Sutton and Dutchman Martijn Maaskant.

All eight will no doubt be excited to contest the famed three-race series, but the week will be extra special for Friedman, who was born in Pittsburgh and went to college in Allentown, host city for the series opening Lehigh Valley Classic.

“The Allentown area has a huge cycling community, so it will be really cool to show that to the rest of the cycling world,” explained Friedman, who studied at the Penn State-Lehigh Valley campus, and prior to the race will get to spend time at home for the first time since Christmas. “In Europe I usually don’t know the courses or any of the people in the crowd, so this will be a lot different. It’s my old stomping ground.”

Indeed, Friedman will bring intimate knowledge to the June 3 Triple Crown opener. He says the slight hill on the course’s long finish straightaway could break up the field, but believes a bunch sprint will eventually decide the final outcome.

Fast finishing sprints won’t necessarily favor Slipstream. Riders such as Farrar, Sutton and Maaskant can all wind it up, but not quite on par with the likes of 2007 Philadelphia International Championship winner J.J. Haedo (Team CSC) or the Cuban Missile Ivan Dominguez (Toyota-United).

“We have some fast guys, but for us the key is that the racing is hard,” predicted Friedman. “Because we race in Europe most of the year, we’re used to that, whereas some of the U.S. guys might not have as much gas at the end. That could be our advantage.”

No matter what happens, though, Friedman and his teammates are all looking forward to the Triple Crown.

“Philly week has always been one of my favorite week’s of racing, it’s just so much fun.” said Friedman, who afterwards will switch gears and contest a series of Olympic qualifying races in hopes of securing a place on the U.S. track cycling team that will head to Beijing in August. “Winning in Philadelphia is a really big deal. That’s why we are sending such a strong team.”