Peloton Blog

No Contador or Astana for ASO

Astana is out of all ASO races (Tour de France, Paris-Nice, Roubaix, Leiege, Fleche, and Tours). I will still maintain that Astana is this years Unibet team and a way for the race organizers to show they will not be told who they can have at their races by the UCI. This team has undergone a major change before (from the Saiz run ONCE and Liberty Seguros to Astana) and the problems continued. So that is what ASO is using to justify their decision. So no Contador the defending champ at either Paris-Nice or the Tour.

The Tour has snubbed top teams/riders before under suspicion. Francesco Casagrande and his team in the 90’s and Pantani after ’99 were not invited. They passed over Cipollini and his team in favor of a “lesser” French team. By their own choice in the early 80’s neither Moser nor Saronni ever came to the Tour.

While I think Astana is not being treated fairly it is not the end of the world or even a major blow to pro cycling. It would be great to see Contador race, but if this means Slipstream gets in that will be exciting as well.

Just like the NCAA basketball tourney selection there is usually some controversy over at least one team. Unlike the past 2 years a team could not buy its way in via the UCI. They have to buy their way in other ways. Notice that after no Saunier Duval in last years Tour of California (they were not invited) this year Scott became a sponsor of the race and the team is there.

The season is back

The new season is here so I figured I would start writing again. The past year had been difficult to follow and get excited about with all the drug stories. Not to mention other things in my life that took me away from paying attention to the good parts of bike racing.

The season really began this week. Sure there was the excellent Tour Down Under and even the GP d'Ouverture La Marseillaise race in France, but for me the season begins with the Etoile de Bessèges stage race in France.  Today won by Iouri Trofimov joining such superstar winners of the past like Frddy Bichot and Jan Wijands. Sure the winners list is a little less then the Tour (Adri Van der Peol and Robbie McEwen are probably the best names on the list), but it is pro racing and it is easy to think the guys that are doing well now are the on the verge of breaking out.  In the 80’s had to wait to see the color pictures of the new jerseys and reading about the race in the issue of Winning that came out in April. Now here in America we can see color pictures the day of, or watch live feeds for many races. I also walked to school uphill both ways in feet of snow.

The year did start out with some fun political controversy between the organizers of the Grand Tours and the UCI. The ProTour that was of dubious value anyway is now even less significant. We had the Giro not inviting 4 ProTour teams and the Tour hinting they might not invite some as well. It looks like Astana might become this years target like Unibet was last year, and just a team to punish as a means to get at the UCI. While the Astana team of last year certainly was suspect for a lot of things the team this year is totally different. Still it is an easy way for the organizers to show their independence. We are going back to the old way of team selection where sponsorship dollars, politics, and regional favoritism play as big of a roll as who is on the team. There certainly are some advantages to the old way rather then a team that has enough money to pay the UCI. I have always said that I hated seeing Euskaltel–Euskadi doing races like Flanders and Roubaix while watching some of the French teams send their lowest level riders to races like the Giro and Vuelta. Give me the smaller teams in the Giro or Vuelta as they become the main race for the sponsor and the riders do everything they can to prove their value

Even the Tour de France has given the nod to “lesser teams” that have a good story over the years. The Columbians raced there as a national amateur team in ’83, the 7-11 team in ’86 was not one of the top teams at that time, and they invited the ANC-Halfords from England to do the ’87 Tour on the anniversary of Tom Simpsons death.

Danielson, argyle, and Mt Evans

Tom Danielson is the latest pro rider joining the Slipstream team. With their current lineup they have a good chance at being picked for the Tour, and Slipstream being an American team will have an appeal to the ASO as well. Now the ugly argyle team outfits will certainly work against them in getting selected for races, but those wacky kids these days thinks it is cool.

Danielson is yet to ride the Tour and will be racing the Vuelta in Spain again this year. Here are some pictures of what he was doing this past July when he won the Mt Evans hillclimb.

      

What has happened since the '08 Tour

A lot happened in this years Tour de France and the aftermath is still being felt.

Rasmussen being sacked by his team while leading the worlds biggest bike race. Unheard of, and all I can think is that team management had some pretty hard evidence that they thought had a good chance to going public. Theo de Rooy the team manger that fired Rasmussen left the team after the Tour. American fans who followed bike racing know de Rooy from the focus CBS gave him in some of their coverage of both Paris-Roubaix and the Tour as a typical domestique. Rasmussen has not been suspended by the UCI and is doing criteriums in Europe.

Discovery no more. It was announced months ago that the Discovery channel would not be sponsoring a cycling team after this year. It was thought that with their success they would find a new primary sponsor, but soon after a rider for the team won it’s 8th Tour it was announced that Tail Wind Sports would not have a team in ’08. This seems a lot like in the 80-90’s when 7-11 became Motorola and then ended just as the USPS team was ramping up. Now it is Slipstream team run by Vaughters that has the big plans for next year that is on the rise. Maybe American cycling can only support 1 major European based team at a time.

In more upbeat news Tour de France star Mauricio Soler won the 2nd stage of the Vuelta a Burgos and is leading the race against some top competition. I can only hope that unlike most riders from Columbia in the past 10 years he has more then one great year.

3 very different sprints in the Tour

Always a treat seeing the yellow jersey win a stage as happened today (results). Usually the sprint finishes in the Tour are straight forward and predictable affairs, but this year we have had 3 very different sprint finishes.

Stage 1 – This looked normal with the Quick-Step leading the way in, but not sure if the rise was a little steeper then thought but the front of the field seemed to slow down and any organization went away. This sort of chaos is perfect for Robbie McEwen who seems to like a less organized finish and he bolted away for a easy finish to go with a hard win.

Stage 2 – A crash and a good rise to the finish allowed teammates Boonen and Steegmans to finish clear of everyone. Not sure if he left the sprint to late, or Boonen allowed Steegmans the win.

Stage 3 – with less then a km to go a break was being caught and Cancellara attacks when there is usually that lull as a break is caught. Zabel manages another 2nd place to go along with all of his other ones.

Now all we need is a traditional sprint with Boonen, Zabel, McEwen, and the other usual suspects.

The Tour starts

An opportunity to watch a pro bike race live on the TV instead of the computer today. Since the VS channel does show the Tour live. Granted I have been around a couple hundred hours of local races so far this year.

It is good to see a nice sunny day in London, and real racing. Hopefully it will be as good of a race as the Giro was. The Giro was a far better race while it was going on then it is in retrospect. While the Giro was occurring it we wondered if Di Luca would crack at any point.

Last year the obvious favorite for the Tour at the start was Valverde due to most of the other favorites not being starters. This year there is a group of riders that could be called favorites including Valverde, Vino, and Klöden. Despite not winning much this year my pick will be Valverde. The reason I don’t like Vino is because he always seems to have 1 or 2 poor days in the longer stage races. Last year at the Vuelta Vino was able to overcome his poor early stages with a strong final week. Normally in the Tour you can’t have any “bad days”. By bad that means finishing well behind a group of riders that you would normally finish with. Last year was the only time I can think of when all the top riders had at least one bad day.

Watching the race I did not think that anyone could come close to Klöden, but Cacellara put in a huge effort. For a sub 10 minute TT to see a more then 30 seconds difference between the top 10 is very unusual. Really the gaps are bigger then I would expect for such a distance on course that was neither demanding nor that technical.

Riis and Giro

The past few weeks have seemed like the movie Sparticus with some riders. Instead of everyone saying “I’m Sparticus” we have all the former Telekom riders saying “I’m a doper”. The two confessions that were the biggest surprise because of their current roles are Zabel and Riis. Zabel because he is still racing and there might be pressure to leave him off races like the Tour de France and Worlds. For Riis it is not a surprise that he used drugs I would put his ride in the ’97 Tour as equal to VDB’s Liege win in ’99 or the Gewiss team in the ’94 Fleche Wallone (along with some other ’94 races) as performances that were always the most obvious ones to wonder about. The surprise was that he did not confess. He owns and runs the CSC team so it is not like he could be fired, but he risks loosing and not getting new sponsors. He also risks having his team excluded from the big races as well. Never mind that there is no obvious link between the current CSC team and doping, but they could punish them for Riis’s past.

For current racing the Giro has continued to be the best race since the ’05 Giro. Di Luca has been the only consistent in the race, but we have been treated to lots of other good rides. Garzelli, Ricco, Piepoli have all put in exciting rides.  Di Luca chasing down Mazzoleni to limit his loses was great racing. So far the only disappointing stage was the Oropa time trial that only confirmed the strength of Di Luca.

I love the finish that the Giro does in Briancon. Up the narrow streets always brings exciting racing. Whenever the Tour de France goes to this city they go the easier way avoiding the narrower roads. Maybe only the walled city of Avila at the Vuelta is a better finishing city.

Getting back into things.

It has been a long time since I did an entry here. Real job complete with business trip, as well as working at some early season bike races have seemed to consumed my time. Not to mention the ongoing drug issues have been taking up too much news. Just when we thought things were turning the corner after some really good spring classics the news is back to the dreaded Operación Puerto and first Basso is off Discovery and now his “I saw the doctor, but did not dope” claim. Someone pointed out he used the “Frigo Defense” after Frigo was caught with some drugs, but said they were “just in case”. The amusing point is after the lab analyzed Fridgo’s drugs they were not even real. I wont even get into the circus that is the Landis case.

It is easy at this point to be sick of pro racing, but then you watch a race like Liege- Bastogne-Liege and see a great ride by Di Luca. The first week of the Giro has been it’s usual entertaining self with a nice mixture of sprint finishes, hilly stages, and even a climbing finish to create some variety. A wonderful combination of young starts of Ricco and Schleck along with veteran pros Piepli and Noe sure made todays stage entertaining. This sort of racing can make you forget the negative things.

Plus reading the fun book Cycling Greatest Misadventures and that is reminding me that there is so much more to this silly contraption called a bike then a bunch of skinny guys racing around Europe. So will try to be back and talk about some good books and good racing.

The Death of Marco Pantani by Matt Rendell

This month marks the 3rd anniversary of the death of Marco Pantani. So far there have been 3 major books published in English about the troubled Italian star. The first was by John Willcockson of VeloNews that was a collection of articles written about Pantani over the years that provided some nice snapshots, but no real overview of his career or life. The next was by his manager Manuela Ronchi, but her dealings with him started after he won the Tour de France in ’98. So while both of these are good books they did not show a complete picture of Pantani.

Now we have Matt Rendall, who also wrote the really good book on Colombia cycling, has a biography of Pantani. The first half of the book is covers his life and career through the Madonna di Campiglio. It has some of the best accounts of the races that Pantani was dominating in that I have read. It is not just the Tour and Giro stage, but also includes some of the smaller moments that I remember like his attack on the Cipressa in the ’99 Milan-San Remo. It also has a very good accounting of his life before he turned pro, and a background on his family so you know where he came from.

The second half of the books is after the '99 Giro and goes into at times excruciating detail on Pantani’s downfall and refuting all the claims from the Pantani camp to explain his medical results. There is more information about EPO and what it does then is probably needed. He also quietly ties several other riders to the doctors Pantani was dealing with as well.

The end result is that the first half builds Pantani up as one of the greatest climbers and one of the greatest personalities of the sport, and then the second half tears him apart as one of the biggest and worse examples of drug use in the sport. It leaves you agreeing with both sides of Pantani.

For the Pantani fan the first half will remind you of everything great about the man, and why many of us became members of the cult of the Pantani. The second half will prove all the negative things that have come out about him after the Madonna di Campiglio and drug use in the sport.

Edited to fix a stupid (on my part) typo

Unibet and advertising

Yesterday the European pro season was kicked off yesterday with Jeremy Hunt winning the GP d'Ouverture La Marseillaise (results) in France. The better part of the story is that France has a law that prohibits the advertising of foreign gambling and betting houses. So the team to race wore a great jersey with a “?” on it rather then Unibet (picture). This is one reason why ASO is saying they can’t race at Paris-Nice. Now considering the Belgium Lotto team sponsored by a government lottery never has had problems it seems a little inconsistent.

This reminds me of the Coors Light team in the late 80’s and early 90’s. They might have been the strongest domestic pro team at the time. During the 1991 Tour of Texas (one of the biggest US races) when they had a stage that went through Smith County that was dry the team had to cover their jerseys, bikes, and team cars so that Coors beer would not be advertised in the county. Like Unibet yesterday it gives great one day publicity for the team, but that is not something they want to much more then once.