Tour nine shaping up for Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel is zeroing in on its nine riders who will defend the team’s colors in the first Tour de France of the post-Lance Armstrong era.

According to sport director Dirk Demol, the nine pre-selected riders include two new faces which have yet to ride the Tour with Discovery Channel. Young Russian Vladimir Gusev and promising Basque rider Egoi Martinez are both penciled in to earn a Tour start position.

“It’s not like the past, when we had the whole team for Lance. The team comes with different goals,” Demol told VeloNews. “Of course, there are always 11-12 guys who need to be ready for the Tour.”

The others are all veterans of past Discovery Channel Tour teams, with Viatcheslav Ekimov likely to return after missing last year’s race with an injury. Riders on last year’s winning effort not expected back this year are Manuel Beltrán and Benjamin Noval.

Four of the Tour nine are currently racing in the Giro d’Italia, with Ekimov, Pavel Padrnos, José Luis Rubiera and Paolo Savoldelli riding hard in Italy to push Savoldelli as high as possible in the overall.

The remaining five are ramping up preparations for the July 1 start of the Tour. José Azevedo, George Hincapie, Yaroslav Popovych, Gusev and Martínez will all likely race in the Dauphiné Libéré in early June.

Demol said Hincapie is “good” after recovering from injuries from his fall at Paris-Roubaix and is back in Europe since last week training “four or five hours a day and he’ll be ready for the Dauphiné.”

Despite the fact there’s no team time trial in this year’s Tour, many of the Tour riders will also compete the ProTour team time trial in mid-June, Demol said.

Tentative short list for Discovery Channel’s Tour nineJosé AzevedoViatcheslav EkimovGeorge HincapieVladimir GusevEgoi MartínezPavel PadrnosYaroslav PopovychJosé Luis RubieraPaolo Savoldelli

No Popo Catalunya
Discovery Channel Yaroslav Popovych is the major absentee in this week’s Volta a Catalunya in Spain. The Ukraine rider barnstormed to a surprising victory last year, but skipped the chance to defend his title.

“He was only here last year because he was coming back from a knee problem and he needed to get in some racing,” sport director Dirk Demol said. “This year he’s on a different program and he’s already been racing a lot in the spring.”

The seven-day Catalunya tour was the team’s first ProTour victory last year and Popovych was the unexpected winner after coming back from a racing absence to ride well in the mountains to secure victory.

Popovych has already raced Paris-Nice, Vuelta a Castilla y León (where he beat teammate Jason McCartney and Alexandre Vinokourov in a time trial) and the Tour de Georgie. Up next is the Dauphiné Libéré ahead of July’s Tour de France.

“We come here without big ambitions for the overall,” Demol said of the Catalunya tour, which concludes Sunday in Barcelona. “We don’t have a real team leader and we have a lot of guys coming back to racing. It’s clear we don’t have the strongest team here, but we’ll make the best of it.”

The team almost scored a victory in the opening time trial when young prospect Janez Brajkovic tied for second with two other riders at three seconds behind winner Fabian Cancellara (CSC). Brajkovic, a rail-thin rider from Slovenia, won the U-23 world time trial championship ahead of the favored Thomas Dekker in Verona, Italy.

Ullrich content with TT success
Jan Ullrich (T-Mobile) was the happiest guy around following his first victory of the 2006 campaign, not because he won but because it bodes well for July. Ullrich shrugged off critics who said he was out of shape with a solid effort to win 50km race against the clock.

“I’m amazed that I posted the best time. I wasn’t firing on all cylinders initially. When I heard my time was among the best, I really gave it a hundred percent,” Ullrich said on the team’s web page. “It was a test, but the result doesn’t matter. What counts is the Tour.”

Ullrich is using the three-week Giro to prepare for an assault on July’s Tour, where he’ll line up alongside Ivan Basso (CSC) as the favorite for victory. While Basso is already at the top of his game to lead the Giro, Ullrich is staying out of sight with the exception of Thursday’s big ride.

”Jan rode a very strong second half of the race. The race plan was to hold back until he hit the second half of the course and rode into the headwinds. After the final time check, he gave it his all,” sport director Rudy Pevenage said. “When I saw the way Jan worked on the first stages, I knew he was on the track.”

Boonen hitting Alps
Reigning world champion Tom Boonen (Quick Step-Innergetic) will be hitting the Alps in a three-day training session in early June, the team announced. The camp is set for June 1-3, which could open the door for a start in the Dauphiné Libéré, which begins Sunday. Boonen could also race the Tour de Suisse later in June to hone his form ahead of the Tour de France.