Peloton Blog

Riccò out of the Tour

I honestly thought the doping news would be limited to riders like Beltran that are in the later part of the careers and other riders not in the top of the GC. The news today about Riccò is obviously disappointing. I was just beginning to really like him as a rider as well. I hope it is just him on the Saunier Duval-Scott team and nobody else. Though right now I look at Stage 10 and am reminded of the Gewiss-Ballan team at the La Flèche Wallonne in 1994, but hope it is not like that.

With Riccò gone it is hard to tell what impact if any it will have on the GC. We lost the rider that animated the race the most. The CSC team with the Schleck brothers and Sastre are the obvious candidates to fill this role. The one competition this has the biggest impact is the King of the Mountain as Riccò had a decent lead there. In fact 4 of the top 10 riders in the King of the Mountains were Saunier Duval–Scott riders. It is incredibly unusual for that competition not to be effectively done by the time they get to the 2nd mountain range in the Tour.

First tour psotive drug test - Beltrán EPO

The news today is the Beltrán tested positive for EPO (news) in a test after the first stage.

2 or 3 years ago this would have been big news, but I am not sure if it is today. He is one of those riders from that period that I think we assumed most were doing some sort of doping. At this point I think it goes into the no big surprise category and there goes another one. The house cleaning that has gone on the past 2 years I thought was going to damage pro cycling more then help it, but now I have changed my mind.

There has been a difference in racing this year other then the French riders doing better then in the past decade. The stars are still winning races, but it is from more aggressive racing and when one team tries to control a stage race they have failed. We are not seeing one team ride at the front for several days in the row with a pace so high that nobody can attack.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.