Peloton Blog

Relax-Gam team for 2007

At first it was thought the Tinkoff Credit System team was the “controversial team” of the coming year with Hamilton and Hondo both coming off drug suspensions, and Ricardo Serarano has some questions in his recent past. To out do them for a team that raises the most eyebrows when looking at the roster is the revamped Spanish team Relax-Gam. They have Francisico Mancebo as the team leader and Oscar Sevilla who were both caught up in Operación Puerto. Mancebo was never charged with anything and little has come out about him, but Sevilla has been caught up a lot more but still no charges. Mancebo first announced his retirement when Operación Puerto broke, but started looking for a new team for '07 when things did not look so bad. They also have Santigo Perez who after riding an amazing Vuelta in 2004 was caught like Hamilton (both rode for Phonak at the time) as having had blood transfusions. Perez did not follow the Hamilton route of fighting the 2 year suspension and both ended up with the same ban. Perez probably did not have the resource as Tyler to do such a fight, nor as much to loose.

Look for the Relax team mostly in the Spanish races again this year. In 2006 they did have a wild card spot in the Vuelta, and should get one again this year. Complete squad can be found here.

Unibet and Carlos Quesada

This week the Unibet.com team announced that Spanish rider Carlos Garcia Quesada was no longer part of the team. He signed with them last year after his great 2005 Vuelta in the team’s efforts to become a ProTour team. He was on the list of riders being involved with Operación Puerto but ended up being cleared. Before Puerto hit he won the early season race Vuelta Andalucía, and that has already been a source of controversy for the team as the race said Unibet would not be invited without Garcia Quesada.

While the Vuelta Andalucía is not part of the ProTour this is not the first race UniBet is having issues with as they were not invited to Paris-Nice either. They look to be the ball being kicked around in the battle between race organizers and the UCI.

A silver weekend fo the US in cross

Great weekend of racing for the United States at the cyclocross world championships in Belgium! Silver medals for junior Danny Summerhill, Katie Compton, and Jonathan Page. Looks like all those back row starts that Katie always did in Colorado races when lining up with either the men Cat 3s or the men open category paid off. Summerhill was the first to make Colorado proud over the weekend, and then Katie showed the rest of the world what we knew she could do for the past several years. This was the first year she ever did UCI races since in the past the rules for the Paralympics, were she was the pilot of a tandem, did not allow her to do the UCI races.

Results at CyclingNews

Contador and Unibet

All the team rosters are getting finalized. Discovery announced their complete team last week. One of the new members is Spanish rider Alberto Contador. This might be their best signing besides Basso. Contador had an aneurysm in 2004 and brain surgery, but has shown no further problems in ’05 or ’06 where he continued to improve. He also had one of the most dramatic near-crashes I have seen in the ’05 Paris-Nice when he came out of his pedal on a descent.

One of the basic concepts of the ProTour looks to be dealt a major blow with Paris-Nice not inviting Unibet to take place. Paris-Nice is put on by ASO the same organization that puts on the Tour de France and Paris-Roubaix. Unibet was also told they could not come to the Vuelta a Andalucia in February if Carlos García Quesada is not on the team. Hope they have better luck with the Belgium races where they have done most of their racing the past few years.

2006 and 2007 getting started

Feel I should write something after the break for the new year. The end of the year reviews in all the major magazines and websites were essentially the same. The only interesting and unique things were VeloNews giving Landis its North American rider of the year resulting in some interesting conversation, and Cycle Sport in it’s ranking of all the ProTour races of 2006 showed guts (stupidity) by ranking Paris-Tours as the 5th best race of the year, while giving the exciting Vuelta 14th just ahead of the Eindhoven TTT. The ending of Paris-Tours was as dramatic as Demol winning the ’88 Paris-Roubaix by beating a guy that had a plastic bag stuck in his derailleur in a sprint. Still Paris-Tours and most office park criteriums were better then the Race2Replace thing.

The UCI and Grand Tour race organizers are still fighting. UCI even said teams could drop down to 8 riders to get more teams in, and gave Astana a ProTour license in their attempts to maintain control. Landis has started a fund to help his defense against doping charges. I guess people can view it like a pay-per-view opportunity to see him race again. Valverde who previously has kept out of any controversy the past few years has been in the news a lot with rumors of going to T-Mobile as well as being linked to Dr. Feuntes of Operation Puerto fame.

There is real racing going on with the cyclocross season wrapping up in 2 weeks with the world champs. I am betting on some good American performances there from Danny, Katie, and others! Pro road racing gets going with the Tour Down Under next week, and followed by racing in Qatar and Langkawi. For those of us that think of more the more traditional opening of the season the Etoile de Bessèges starts the 2nd week of February.

Tinkoff and cycling owners

If a team has a non-rider for a face it is usually the team manager. In the past we had mangers like Guimard, Peter Post, and Jan Raas that become face for the team. In recent years Saitz, Riis, and to a slightly lesser extent Bruynel are as well known as many of their riders. That is still the exception as most teams it is the riders that you think of first and last when you think of the team. After the team managers the actual people that right the checks are even more invisible. For the most part they are multi-national corporations that the marketing department decided that paying a bike team is good advertising. There have been very few George Steinbrenner or Al Davis type in the cycling world (thank goodness), but now we do have Oleg Tinkov with his new team Tinkoff Credit Systems. There is a short interview with him over at CyclingNews here. The team made waves with the signing of Tyler Hamilton, Danilo Hondo, and Ricardo Serrano all of whom have a past with drug issues.

The only other high profile team owner I can remember is Bernard Tapie that ran the La Vie Claire team of the 1980’s with Hinault, LeMond, Hampsten, and lots of other top riders. Tapie eventually would up with a short jail term in the ‘90s. Donald Trump did lend his name and some money to the Tour de Trump bike race that was eventually picked up the DuPont company for a few years. I doubt there will be a sudden influx of rich people wanting to use cycling for vanity projects, but it is good to see Tinkov. Cycling has notoriously been lacking great personalities in all aspects of the sport, and Tinkov certainly adds some color.

Giro 2007 route

This past weekend the route for the 2007 Giro was announced. As usual it shows more imagination then the Tour. The ’07 Giro will be far less mountains then the ’06 version, and that is good as when you have a route like they did this year if one rider is physically superior like Basso was it can really get boring. Despite fewer mountains they did include the big climb of the Zoncolon. The Zoncolon is a ridiculously steep climb much like the Angliru in the Vuelta. They will doing the Zoncolon from the Ovaro side and that is supposed to be a harder climb then when done from Sutrio side as it was in 2003. It also includes a mountain TT that is uncommon for the Giro. The mountain TT will be up the Oropa climb last done in ’99 when Pantani won the stage. Still to this day it is probably my favorite climb by Pantani as he gave all the other riders an almost 30 second head start to adjust his bike, and then did a terrifying climb up passing lots of riders to win by 21 seconds.

Also of note in the Giro is it opening with a 24 km TTT. The short distance gives us the spectacle of the discipline without having to do silly rules like the Tour has done to prevent the stage from being too decisive. The first mountain top is on Stage 4 giving the race a significant stage early. Overall a better ballanced Giro that I am sure everyone hopes will bring back the drama of 2005.

Returning this next year is the best young rider jersey for the best 25 year old or younger rider, but costing us the Intergiro jersey that I think only a handful of people understood and fewer even caring about.

Next up will be the Vuelta route announcement, and the ongoing battle between the UCI and race organizers.

ProTour says no to Astana

The news today is that the Astana team of Vino will not be given a spot on the ProTour. (news)  So most likely the spot made available by Phonak leaving will be given to Belgium team sponsored by Unibet. Manolo Saiz still holds the Liberty Seguros team spot and no word about that. I am guessing that there will be one fewer ProTour team. That would be good as for the first time there will be more then 2 or so truly interesting non ProTour teams. With Astana, Team Barloworld, Tinkoff Credit Systems, the new team of Davide Boifava and wherever Ullrich might mind up. So if the current format continues we will be stuck seeing Euskaltel doing the northern spring classics, and some of the French and Italian teams in doing the Spanish stage races while some riders that want to be there are left out. The teams don’t really want to be there, and the race organizers would rather other local teams to be there.

The idea that the UCI had with the ProTour is that we would see the top riders doing more races, but the reality it hasn’t. As Delagado pointed out in the VeloNews interview last week that the top riders are doing far less races then what was done in the 80’s. All it has done is to make the ProTour teams send the “B team” to races they are not interested, rather then have a regional team that wants to be there.  The UCI has to remember they can't mandate good races, but they sure seem to want to hurt established ones (Vuelta) to help newer ones (Tour of Germany).

Isaac Gálvez

Last week at the Gent Six Day track event Spanish rider Isaac Gálvez died after a crash. (news) Gálvez was a world champion on the track and a solid road sprinter regularly finishing in the top 10. A few years he was responsible for a crash in the Giro that took out Mario Cipollini, but he continued to improve.

I think the people that watch cycling for the crashes are a far greater minority then say NASCAR. Since the only protection they have are foam helmets the crashes are far more real. You watch a crash in a car race and you don’t really see the driver, or in American football the players are so well protected the worse injuries don’t appear that bad. The most notable exception is the Theisman broken leg that we were treated to with endless slow motion replays for years. In cycling you see the blood as they remount the bikes or lay at the side of the road.

Just a reminder on how dangerous this activity is, but the better reminders for that are the yearly fatalities that happen everywhere when someone is just riding their bike. Remember the bigger vehicle will win every time, even if they are breaking the law. Everyone ride safe.

In happier news the Giro route will be announced this weekend. If some of the early rumors are true there will be a few things that are interesting about the route.

Jesper Skibby book

A new cycling book is coming out this week and it is biography by former pro racer Jesper Skibby (news), and will detail his drug use. Not sure what language it will be in or when it will be available in the US. Since the publisher’s web site is in Danish I am guessing it will be in that language. It sounds like it will be more in the vein of the Rough Ride by Paul Kimamge (review) in that it will be about his experiences and not naming other riders.

This could be very interesting as Skibby’s career from ’86-2000 spanned the rise of EPO and the blood boosters from long rumored dangerous practices by individuals to more a team controlled program under the supervision of doctors. In fact TVM was also caught in the ’98 Tour along with the Festina team, and Skibby had ridden for TVM through most of the 90’s. So we will see if he confirms or denies the perception of the use of drugs from the late 80’s through the 90’s.

Edited to fix one homophone error and one factual error that I made when I typed this out in a rush that 2 people more observant then me caught.