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Cycling News and Opinions
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Back to news and opinion index page for links to archived stories August 31: Here are the new UCI ranking for riders. Riders:
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August 25: The UCI released it post-GP Ouest-France rankings for riders, teams and nations: Riders:
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August 24: The Vuelta start list is starting to shape up with Alejandro Valverde, Cadel Evans, Kim Kirchen, Samuel Sanchez, Tom Danielson, Damiano Cunego, Ivan Basso, and the Schleck bros. planning to start. Also, Alexandre Vinokourov has managed to get Astana (meaning director Johan Bruyneel, I assume) to agree to put him on the start list. Not coming, Michael Rasmussen who wasn't able to get his paperwork done in time. I'll post the start list with back numbers later in the week on the Vuelta 2009 page. I've redone the Vuelta podium history page and added average speeds and distances for all editions of the Vuelta. The UCI is trumpeting the lack of doping positives for the 2009 Tour de France. In the Cloud-Cuckooland that the UCI seems to occupy, this is equated with a clean race. No one who saw the climbing rates (VAMS), which in one case was an all-time Tour record for mountain climbing speed, can feel comfortable that this race was clean. The head of the French anti-doping agency, Pierre Bordry thinks there are new generations of dope that have yet to be detected. I'll take Bordry's wisdom, given that he was tossing dopers right and left out of the 2008 Tour, over the feel-good announcements from the UCI. It looks like we'll get to see regular mano-a-mano sprints between Mark Cavendish and Alessandro Petacchi next year. Petacchi has been stuck on the LPR team which is not a Pro Tour squad. LPR generally hasn't been invited to the big races. Petacchi has departed LPR with a year left to go on his contract and moved to Lampre for 2010. I hope we get rivals, Columbia and Lampre, doing drag-racing lead-out trains to the finishing line before unleashing their speedsters. That would be so cool... The UCI has done something useful, releasing the rider rankings. I'll get them up tomorrow. Alberto Contador remains the world number one rider, Astana the number one team and Spain the leader among cycling nations. August 21: Earlier Larry Theobald had listed the reasons why the Giro d'Italia is the greatest race. Padraig of Red Kite Prayer now counters with why the Tour de France remains number 1: "When it comes to sports, cycling has been my favorite since long before indexed shifting existed. And when it comes to sporting events, the Tour de France has been my favorite since, well, since I found out about it. "Let me say that Larry has me at a disadvantage; aside from being a good guy, Larry is also knowledgeable. In the 18 years I've known him, he has proven to be better versed in all things cycling than even some of the most dedicated riders I know. He's got far more years seeing the Giro and the Tour than I do, but I've got something you can't argue: unconditional love." Here's the rest of his essay August 20: Here's an updated list of rider tranfer rumors, some of which might actually be true. Alberto Contador might feel like playing Robert Johnson's Cross Road Blues. Astana seems to think that Contador's having signed a contract that goes through the 2010 season obligates Señor Contador to race for them. Astana has made it very clear that they intend to see Contador suited up in an Astana kit when he races next year. Contador has made it clear he wants out.
August 17: Following the Vattenfall Cyclassics, the UCI released its new rankings for riders, teams and nations: Riders:
Teams:
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August 14: Which is better, the Tour de France or the Giro d'Italia? Larry Theobald of CycleItalia has his say. Il Giro vs Le Tour "At the risk of getting the Tour faithful wound up, I'll explain why I believe the Giro d'Italia is a better event than Le Tour de France. First some background. Yours truly and wife Heather worked for most of the 1990s with an operation that arguably pioneered the "race-chasing" cycling vacation. We followed both the Tour and Giro around their respective countries, hauling our clients in 9-passenger mini-vans with bikes mounted on top, enjoying the thrill of riding on the actual race route mere hours before the pros did battle on the same climbs. Both programs used similarly-priced hotels and followed similar itineraries. We also have continued when possible, to see selected individual stages of both events as part of our current venture, CycleItalia, so our experience is not totally based on what some may call "ancient history". "Our experience coincided with the Giro d'Italia organizer RCS' efforts to open their race to a more international audience. Andy Hampsten won in 1988 while Greg LeMond often used La Corsa Rosa to hone his form for the upcoming Tour. The old days, along with claims of designing or even modifying a course to suit the national hero were coming to a close, even if the idea that somehow Francesco Moser was blown to a time-trail victory by a TV helicopter were dubious at best. By the early 1990s there was again talk of "doing the double"-winning both the Giro and Tour in the same year. "BigMig" Indurain did just that in 1992 and 1993 while Marco Pantani did it again in 1998, matching the earlier feats of Coppi, Merckx, Roche and others. The Giro d'Italia was again a truly international race. Why do I think it's a better race? Read on." Better roads. I believe it was Swiss pro Alex Zülle who explained he liked racing the Giro because Italian roads were so much better than most. What he may not have known is many of the roads used in the race get repaved just for the event! One year we were mapping a route in the Alps over the Colle Fauniera just a few days before La Corsa Rosa was to ascend the tortuous climb. We had to pause a few times as fresh asphalt was spread and rolled smooth on the upper slopes of the road! Nowadays, when riding or mapping a route in Italy with pavement that needs some work, the running joke between us is "the Giro needs to come here" because we know that's a sure-fire way to see the road repaved. Read the rest of Larry's piece here August 13: We'll synergize our unfair and unbalanced approach by dealing in straight rumor and innuendo. Right now there is a frenzy of negotiation as the teams work to improve their rosters for the 2010 season. UCI rules say that the riders and teams are not supposed to comment on a 2010 signing until September 1. But there is a lot of scuttlebutt out there regarding where some key riders are going. Here's what's being floated out there. The team in parenthesis is the rider's current squad. None of this should be treated as any more than an (un)educated guess.
August 12: Put a fork in him. He's done. Danilo Di Luca's LPR Brakes team has sacked the 2007 Giro winner after 2 of his 2009 Giro "B" samples confirmed the presence of EPO-CERA in his system. Wait, there's more. The team is also planning on suing Di Luca because of the damage his doping has done to its image. The 33-year old racer, who has had a questionable doping history, is facing a potential lifetime racing ban if his earlier suspension for hanging around a notorious doping doctor is considered a true doping suspension. Di Luca plans to fight the charges and insists he is innocent. I have come to value the output of a mass spectrograph (or whatever they use now) more highly than the word of accused dopers in these cases. Rarely has the mass spectrogrpah broken my heart by later being shown to have been wrong (but it has happened). I wish I could say the same about racers. Caisse d'Epargne is breaking open its piggy bank as it tries to come up with enough S&H Green stamps to sign Alberto Contador. Contador's contract has another year to run but it does have a buy-out clause. I'll bet they will not be cheap. I'm guessing that it will be somewhere about the equivalent of the Gross National Product of Austria. Caisse d'Epargne is looking for another sponsor to help defray the cost of signing the man who has, by the age of 26, won 4 Grand Tours. Alexandre Vinokourov, who won the stage 3B time trial in the Tour de l'Ain abandoned during the tough stage 4 with it hilltop finish atop the Col du Grand Colombier. Chris Horner went into the final stage with 19-second lead but Rein Taaramae (Cofidis) distanced him by 37 seconds on the final climb, giving the Estonian the overall win and leaving Horner (Astana) second at 25 seconds. August 8: Danilo Di Luca's 2009 Giro "B" samples confirm the initial finding that Di Luca used EPO-CERA. Di Luca denies that he used EPO and his lawyer has vowed a vigorous fight. August 7: If We Can't See It, It's Not There Dept. Several high-profile riders in the 2008 Giro later showed up in other races positive for EPO-CERA. It's clear that use of of the banned blood-booster EPO-CERA is not rare. The obvious move, one anyone wanting to have a clean race would make, would be to go back and re-test the 2008 Giro urine samples and root out the cheaters and do everything possible to award the prizes to the riders racing clean. But we are forced to deal with the Cloud-Cuckoo-Land of the UCI which runs professional racing and dope-testing in particular. Last fall the UCI said (in a perfect imitation of a Spanish magistrate trying to hide Puerto evidence) that the only reason to do retrospective testing would be if there were some obvious reason to look for doping. Meaning, of course, that at the time of the statement they asked us to pretend to believe there was no reason to perform the retrospective tests. The UCI should come up with a higher quality of what I am supposed to call manure because my mother might read this posting. On August 5 The Killer, Danilo Di Luca, had his third positive for EPO-CERA from the 2009 Giro. That's 3 positives from one stage race. Now, I must say that Di Luca maintains his innocence and as I write this, the "B" counter samples have not come back confirming his use of EPO. I believe that almost immediately after the third positive the UCI said it wanted to retest the 2008 Giro urine samples which, since May of this year, have been held by the Italian police. I figure there are 2 possible explanations for the UCI's changed stance. 1: The Italian police are going to test the samples anyway, so why not make a good show and go along, pretending that this is what they wanted all along. I love make-believe. Or, 2: they are so shaken by the disgrace of Di Luca, who was the 2007 Giro winner and 2009 Giro second-place, that they figure that perhaps a little testing wouldn't be too bad. I'm leaning towards number one and believe they would really rather no one bothered his little head about any of this doping stuff. Doping riders are not harmless scamps performing pranks. Nor should they be characterized, as Lance Armstrong said about David Millar (who has paid the price for his misdeeds and is working hard for reform), who was "caught with his hand in the cookie jar". They are cheaters who corrupt the sport, endanger their own lives and health and the lives of others who feel they must dope to stay competitive. And they are criminals who flaunt the laws of nations. One can't but feel that the cycle racing industry is more concerned about the short-term effects of scandal rather than the long-term payoff of a clean sport. August 5: Alexandre Vinokourov raced in France in a 45-kilometer criterium for the first time since his 2007 suspension for doping (see August 3 posting below). He has not yet become part of his old Astana team, and as an Astana spokesman predicted, Vino was not wearing Astana kit. He wore a jersey with a picture of his favorite racer, Alexandre Vinokourov, and the motto, "Vino 4 Ever". He did say he planned to race the Tour L'Ain which runs from August 9 to August 12, presumably with the Astana team. He also made a public appeal to Alberto Contador to stay with the Astana squad, promising to build the Kazakh outfit around the Spanish racer. Vinokourov further pledged to work for Contador in the future. August 3: Alexandre Vinokourov has completed his 2-year racing suspension for doping-while-stupid. In the 2007 Tour he was positive for homologous blood doping. That's the very easy to detect as well as extrememly dangerous offense of using someone else's blood. By the way, both the 1984 USA Olympic cycling team and Francesco Moser when he broke Eddy Merckx's World Hour Record performed that very same act, but it wasn't against the rules at the time, just against common medical sense. Vino is planning to race today (Tuesday) in a 45-kilometer criterium at Castillon-la-Bataille in France. Astana says he will not be wearing their colors at the race. The UCI released its post-San Sebastian Classic rankings. The text in quotes is from the UCI site: "03.08.2009 Description: Roman Kreuziger may not have won the Clásica Ciclista San Sebastian-San Sebastian, but his second place behind Spaniard Carlos Barredo has had important consequences for his position in the UCI World Rankings. The Liquigas rider's new total of 310 points means he has moved from fifth to third overall behind World Rankings leader Alberto Contador (Astana), whose total of 527 points remains unchanged. Andy Schleck (Saxo Bank) remains in second overall with 334. As a result of Kreuziger's rapid rise through the ranks, Great Britain's Mark Cavendish (Columbia-HTC) slides from third to fourth, and Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d'Epargne) drops from fourth to fifth. " I see that Spain, which seems to be in a constant ongoing doping crisis and appears to work harder than any other nation in covering up chemically aided racing is the number 1 racing nation. France, with its rigorous testing, is not even in the top 10. Also, no French team is in the top 10. Maybe Bernard Hinault is right and French racers are lazy. I like Hinault's bluntness, but I'm not buying that explanation. Riders:
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