ProTour champion Alejandro Valverde is enjoying a vacation this week in the Caribbean island of Curacao, but he’s already thinking about the 2007 season.

Valverde will take another two weeks’ break before getting back into serious training to prepare for the upcoming year where he hopes to confirm the success of his breakout season.

“I had a great season this year despite the disappointment at the Tour. I was the most consistent all year long and I was able to win some big races,” Valverde told VeloNews. “My season next year will be the same as this year, except that maybe I won’t race the Giro di Romandie. Concerning the Vuelta, it will be the same as this year. I won’t decide until after the Tour.”

Valverde said his top goal for 2007 will be the spring classics, including defending his titles Flèche Wallone and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, as well as a run at the Tour de France.

“Everyone says I can win a Tour one day, but I want to finish one first,” said Valverde, referring to his two abandons in his first two Tour appearances. Valverde won a climbing stage ahead of Lance Armstrong in 2005, but abandoned with a bum knee at the end of the second week. He crashed out in stage three this year with a broken clavicle.

After recovering from surgery, Valverde bounced back to win a stage and finish second overall in the Vuelta a España before claiming his third medal with bronze in four world’s appearances during the Salzburg championships in September.

“It will be hard to top the 2006 season and the only way to do that is to do well in the Tour,” Valverde continued. “The Tour will be my top goal in the coming years.”

Valverde said his top goal for 2007 will be the spring classics, including defending his titles Flèche Wallone and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, as well as a run at the Tour de France.

Valverde will make his 2007 season debut at the Mallorca Challenge in February and race in his hometown race at the Vuelta a Murcia in March before tackling the spring classics. After a break, Valverde will return for Dauphiné Libéré and then the Tour.

The Vuelta will remain a question mark, but what’s sure is that Valverde will be back for the world championships.

“There are two races I want to win before retiring – the Tour and the world title,” he said. “I already have bronze and silver medals, so there’s only one color that’s missing.”

Watch for the upcoming issue of VeloNews for an in-depth feature on Valverde.

Two new Spanish teams in the works
Despite a rash of recent doping scandals that have left the sport reeling in Spain, two new Spanish teams are poised to make debuts in the 2007 season.

Alvaro Pino – the former sport director at Kelme and Phonak – will direct the first professional team based in Spain’s Galicia region while Vicente Belda, sport director at the recently folded Comunidad Valenciana, has been tapped as a consultant for a new team headquartered in Spain’s Canary Islands.

Pino will direct the Karpin-Galicia team that’s already signed 10 riders, including Santos González, David Blanco and David Herrero. The team is being backed by former soccer player Valery Karpin as well as regional support from local governments and businesses.

“We are hoping to demonstrate on the roads that we are a solid and serious team, and above all, a team for the future,” said Pino, who directed Phonak until he was sacked in 2004 following the Tyler Hamilton blood doping scandal.

The team boasts a budget of nearly 4 million euros and hopes to sign between 18-20 riders with strong links to the rainy Galician region of northwest Spain that’s also home to Tour de France heir apparent Oscar Pereiro.

The new Canary Islands teams looks poised to pick up many of the riders left without a job following the departure of the Comunidad Valenciana sponsor at the end of the 2006 season.

Comunidad Valenciana was thrown into turmoil after one of its assistant sport director, Ignacio Labarta, was among five people arrested in May as part of the “Operación Puerto” doping investigation.

The team lost its Tour de France and Vuelta a España wild-card bids and eventually its title sponsor in the wake of negative headlines. Most of the team’s staff and riders, however, have been since formally cleared by a Spanish court.

The new team, tentatively called Fuerteventura-Canarias, will count on Belda as a consultant and will likely be headed up by Jorge Sastre, former director at the recently folded Kaiku team. The two-year project aims to sign 14 pros and race at the continental level in Europe.

Cunego likes tunnel time
Italian star Damiano Cunego hopes his recent trip to a wind-tunnel in Texas will pay dividends in the coming years in the race against the clock. The 2004 Giro d’Italian champion recently returned from a trip to the United States that included some time with aerodynamics expert John Cobb at Texas A&M.

“It was a useful experience and even surprising,” Cunego told Tutto Bici. “We obtained some important advice from Cobb and gained some data that we hope can help us in the future to make some improvements.”

Cunego’s time trial abilities are viewed as his Achilles’ heel in his efforts to win a second grand tour. Still a relative youngster at 25, Cunego was miserable during the 2006 Giro, losing more than five minutes to the likes of Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso in the flat 50km 11th stage.

Cunego, however, was stronger during his Tour de France debut and fended off U23 world time trial champion Markus Fothen in the final TT to retain the best young rider’s classification.