It’s been a long climb for Tom Danielson, who’s no stranger to making climbs on a bicycle.

Danielson hopes to reach the pinnacle starting today, just one week and one day after suffering a serious shoulder injury in a 60 mph crash, when he opens the Tour of Missouri in St. Joseph.

“I’ve been a little bit of an unknown, with injuries,” said the Durango, Colo., rider, who crashed in the first stage of the Vuelta Espana while riding for the Discovery Channel team.

Danielson, who had already missed last year’s Tour de France with a stomach ailment, shattered his shoulder and ruptured a disc in his back. He underwent surgery, then endured a long rehabilitation.

He got back on the bike, regained the strength in his body, then worked to strengthen his psyche.

“It becomes a mental game,” Danielson said. “You know when you first get back on the bike that you’re not as good as you were.”

But he continued to improve and slowly began to believe again.

“It’s easy to sit at home and believe in yourself, but it’s a whole other game when you’ve got 160 guys beside you, all going as hard as they can,” Danielson said. “For me, that was the challenge this year. Honestly, it’s taken me a good five or six months of racing to get to the point where I knew I was back.”

And Danielson is back with a vengeance. As a late addition to Garmin-Chipotle’s team roster, he earned a spot on the Tour of Missouri lineup with a good showing in the Tour of Utah and a fifth-place finish in last week’s U.S. Professional Championships Individual Time Trial, which featured four Garmin-Chipotle riders in the top five.

He has plenty of motivation for this late-season event, which is one of North America’s three “grand tours,” along with the Tour of Georgia and the Tour of California. He’ll be racing in front of his fiancee, a native of Ladue in St. Louis County, and his parents are also coming in for the event.

Although he has never raced in Missouri — he was racing in Europe during last year’s inaugural Tour of Missouri — Danielson said he hopes his fiancee can provide him an advantage.

“The key thing is to study the stage description, the course profiles and everything and gather as much information as you can,” Danielson said, adding that he will draw on his fiancee’s familiarity with the state. “I’ll spend a lot of time researching past race results, looking at where the climbs are and talking to locals.”

Danielson began his professional career in 1994 by racing mountain bikes, and after some success in his native New England, moved onto Team Devo, the leader in U.S. junior development teams. In 1996 he represented the United States as a member of the Junior Worlds team in Australia.

In 1994 Danielson raced with the elite in off-road racing, but after three years of mediocre results made the switch to road racing.

Now he’s hoping to string together some healthy seasons while he’s in his racing prime.

“I’m 30 years old, but I started late,” Danielson said. “I missed a good year of racing (with the injury). I want to go as long as I can, but realistically, probably 40 is about the last of it.”