Cycling has a long and sordid history with doping — that is, taking performance-enhancing drugs (PED) to get ahead in the races. In fact, some of the earliest suspected cases of doping in cycling date back to the late 1800s, when riders would employ stimulants like cocaine to survive epic races, like Bordeaux-Paris, which ran more than 500 kilometers.
The latest Tour de France doping scandal involving stage-winner Mikel Astarloza could jeopardize the future of one of Spain’s few remaining top professional teams. According to reports in the Spanish media, Astarloza’s provisional suspension for failing an out-of-competition control for the banned blood booster EPO could threaten financial backing of the Euskaltel-Euskadi team.
Alejandro Valverde will have something to prove when the Clásica San Sebastián, one of the top one-day events on the UCI ProTour, takes places on Saturday in northern Spain. The 29-year-old Caisse d'Epargne rider was recently banned from competing in Italy for two years by the Italian Olympic Committee after he was implicated in the Operación Puerto doping scandal. The decision, which Valverde has contested, ruled him out of the Tour de France, the 16th stage of which passed through Italy.
Alberto Contador is still celebrating his dominant Tour de France victory, but speculation about where he will race in 2010 will be fueling the rumor mill for weeks to come. While he’s been linked to moves to Garmin-Slipstream or Caisse d’Epargne, what is clear is that he will not join Lance Armstrong and Johan Bruyneel on the new RadioShack team for 2010. “What’s sure, it will be on a different team than Lance,” Contador said. “We’ll see what we can do, whether it’s a new team or find a team that is 100 percent behind me to confront this race to win it again.”
Tour de France chief Christian Prudhomme was cautiously optimistic in celebrating a scandal-free 96th edition on Sunday. For the first time in recent history the world's biggest bike race avoided being dragged through the mire by drugs cheats. On this year's race only the sublime performances of Contador in the grueling mountain stages prompted some experts to raise eyebrows. However Contador, who won with a comfortable lead over his rivals, insists he is a clean Tour champion.
Lance Armstrong ruffled some feathers when he called the 2008 Tour de France a “joke” in the months ahead of his celebrated comeback. The seven-time Tour winner has since apologized for making those remarks, but the top stars from last year’s Tour are not having much luck in the 2009 edition. Of last year’s top 10, only two – Frank Schleck and Christian Vande Velde – are hanging among the leaders this year. Four – Bernhard Kohl, Samuel Sánchez, Alejandro Valverde and Tadej Valjavec – aren’t even in the race.
Tour de France race leader Alberto Contador on Thursday refused to respond to questions relating to his stunning climbing performance in the 15th stage and Thursday’s time trial victory. Spain's 2007 champion took another step towards overall victory when he won the 18th stage time trial to take a virtually unassailable lead of 4:11 over Luxembourg's Andy Schleck. Coming less than a week after his impressive victory on the summit of Verbier in Switzerland, it has cemented Contador's reputation as the best stage racer in the world.
The Johan Bruyneel era at the Astana team will conclude at the end of this season. Bruyneel confirmed to Belgian television Sporza that he will stop running the Kazakhstan-backed team at the conclusion of the 2009 season, citing a breakdown over the expected return of Kazakh rider Alexander Vinokourov. “Astana is a closed chapter for me,” Bruyneel told Sporza.
Johan Bruyneel said if Astana wants to get rid of him as team manager, they should tell him to his face. While a months-long struggle over financial problems apparently resolved for the team ahead of the start of the Tour, the imminent return of Alexander Vinokourov seems to be creating more turbulence. A report in Friday’s edition of L’Equipe said that officials from the Kazakh-backed team plan to jettison the Belgian director and rebuild the team around Vinokourov and Spanish climber Alberto Contador.
Alexander Vinokourov said Wednesday he intends to ride for Astana later this year or there will be serious consequences for those who keep him from riding on the Kazakh-financed team. In a press conference held in Monaco in advance of Saturday’s Tour de France start, Vinokourov, whose suspension for homologous blood doping ends on July 24, said there’s no possibility that he would ride for any team other than the one he helped establish in 2006.
Ten days before the start of the Tour de France is a busy time for any ProTour team manager, but Wednesday was a particularly crazy day for Garmin-Slipstream team manager Jonathan Vaughters. During the same news cycle that reported rumors of Garmin’s interest in signing 2007 Tour de France champion Alberto Contador, the team also released its nine-man Tour roster, leaving off three active riders from last year’s squad.
For the second day in a row, a Frenchman won in a breakaway at the Dauphiné Libéré, this time with veteran head-banger David Moncoutie snagging an impressive victory in the week’s hardest stage over the French Alps. And for the third year in a row, it appears that Cadel Evans will finish runner-up, but it’s not for a lack of trying. The Silence-Lotto captain has finished second twice in a row at the Dauphiné before going on to second at the Tour de France in 2007 and in 2008.
Bernhard Kohl ? the Austrian rider who tested positive for the blood-booster CERA during last year’s Tour de France ? admitted that blood doping was the most effective way to cheat. In an extensive interview with the French sports daily L’Equipe, Kohl said extractions of blood began nearly a year before competition.
Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto) powered to a morale-boosting time trial victory Sunday against archrival Alberto Contador (Astana) to open the 61st Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré. Evans covered the technical, 12km course in Nancy in 15 minutes, 36.64 seconds, posting the best time on a steep climb at 3km and then holding off Contador by eight seconds to win the stage and claim the leader’s jersey at the eight-day Dauphiné.
The 61st Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré clicks into gear this weekend in the traditional dress rehearsal ahead of the Tour de France with a highly anticipated duel between Alberto Contador and Cadel Evans. While many eyes will be on those two for a glimpse of bigger things to come in July, the outright battle for overall victory should be wide open, with such names as Ivan Basso, Igor Anton, Robert Gesink, ambitious French riders such as Rémy Di Gregorio and Pierre Rolland lining up in one of the most competitive fields in years.
As the Giro d’Italia winds down, the troubled Kazakh-backed Astana team still isn’t sure it will be racing the Tour de France in July. The financial woes that have left portions of riders’ salaries unpaid are closer to being resolved, but UCI president Pat McQuaid said team sponsors must meet a Sunday deadline or risk suspension.
Tuesday’s first mountain stage provided an interesting antipasti of who’s going to be the main attraction in this centenary Giro d’Italia. Danilo Di Luca (LPR), the 2007 Giro champion, sprinted to victory ahead of 2000 Giro winner Stefano Garzelli (Acqua e Sapone) out of an elite group of about 40 riders to remind everyone that he’s still a force to reckon with.
Weeks of hype and anticipation culminate Saturday as the centennial celebration of cycling’s most colorful and emotional race finally clicks into gear. The Giro d’Italia is celebrating its 100th birthday with all the raw emotion, intense passion and hard-edged racing that makes the Italian grand tour one of the season’s highlights. Stepping center-stage with aplomb is Lance Armstrong, back in his first grand tour since winning the 2005 Tour de France.
Mont Ventoux will be the top attraction of a challenging 2009 Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré, a favorite warm-up for Tour de France contenders. BMC snagged an important invitation to race the demanding, eight-day course across the heart of the French Alps June 7-14, which might help ease some of the team’s disappointment after being overlooked for the Tour de Suisse later that month. Race officials on Monday announced details of the 2009 route, which will have few opportunities for sprinters and plenty of challenges for riders bucking for the overall.
Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d’Epargne) sprinted to his first victory of the 2009 season in Wednesday’s third stage at the Vuelta a Castilla y León. Levi Leipheimer (Astana) crossed safely with the pack in the second-category summit finish at the San Isidro ski area to retain the overall leader’s jersey he claimed after winning Tuesday’s individual time trial.
Dear Explainer,
I am as much of an anti-doping advocate as the next guy, but isn’t it kind of ridiculous that we’ve been suffering through the on-again-off-again cycles of Operación Puerto for more than three years now? Doesn’t cycling have a freakin’ statute of limitations?
We’ve seen Jan Ullrich driven out of the sport, Ivan Basso suspended and other riders implicated but never charged. Now we have Alejandro Valverde being charged by the Italians over something that supposedly happened in Spain.
After nearly three years of legal wrangling, Spanish prosecutors may be ready to reopen the Operación Puerto doping investigation, which a judge had put on hold last September, El Pais newspaper reported Saturday. A provincial court in Madrid has ruled that there were indications of "an offence against public health" that merited renewed examination and had therefore called for the investigation to be re-activated, according to El Pais.
A three-member arbitration panel has suspended Rock Racing rider Kayle Leogrande for two years, after concluding that he used EPO during last year's Super Week, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) announced Monday. The independent panel of arbitrators from the American Arbitration Association (AAA)/North American Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) unanimously found that Leogrande, 31, used EPO when competing at Superweek on July 26, 2007. Leogrande, who has the option to appeal to the Court of Arbitration of Sport, said he was not yet prepared to respond to the panel’s decision.
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to VeloNews.com's Live Coverage of the 14th stage of the 2008 Vuelta a Espana, a 158.4-kilometer race from Oviedo to a mountain-top finish at the Fuentes de Invierno Ski Resort.
It's another tough day, opeing with a series of Category 3 climbs:
The Alto del Padrón (which summits at12.km)
The Alto de San Tirso (22km)
The Alto de Santa Emiliano (34.5km)
to VeloNews.comcom's Live Coverage of the 11th stage of the 2008 Vuelta a España, a 178-kilometer race from Calahorra to Burgos.
to VeloNews.com's Live Coverage of the ninth stage of the 2008 Vuelta a España, a 200.8-kilometer ride from Vielha to Sabiñánigo.
to VeloNews.com's Live Cverage of the eighth stage of the 2008 Vuelta a Espana, a 151 race from Andorra to a mountain-tip finish at Pla de Beret.
to VeloNews.com's Live Coverage of the fourth stage of the 2008 Vuelta a Espana, a 170.3-kilometer race from Cordoba to Puertollano.
Spain’s Green Bullet isn’t sweating it. Alejandro Valverde says if he doesn’t win the Tour de France this year, he’s got plenty more in his legs. That’s not to say that he’s shying away from a unique opportunity to become the third consecutive Spanish winner, but Spain’s El Imbatido – “the unbeaten one” – is trying to tamp down over-zealous expectations from national media who are hyping his chances in the absence of defending champion Alberto Contador.
Denmark's Michael Rasmussen, who was thrown out while leading the 2007 Tour de France for lying about his whereabouts, has been banned for two years by the Monaco cycling federation, the sport's world governing body UCI said on Tuesday. In a case brought by the UCI in February, a three-member panel organized under the authority of the Monaco Cycling Federation, ruled that Rasmussen had intentionally misled doping authorities regarding his location in the lead-up to last year’s Tour.
The Mailbag is a regular department on VeloNews.com. Write to webletters@insideinc.com. Please include your full name, hometown and state or nation. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. Writers are encouraged to limit their submissions to one letter per month. The letters published should not be viewed as reflecting the opinions, policies or positions of VeloNews.com, VeloNews magazine or our parent company. "Well, it's one louder, in't it?" Editors,
Caisse d'Epargne's Alejandro Valverde gave his future Tour de France rivals an early reminder of his explosive climbing talents by winning his second Liège-Bastogne-Liège classic Sunday.
Spain's 2007 Tour de France champion Alberto Contador is to reappear in the Criterium du Dauphine on June 8 he announced on Monday. The 25-year-old, who has been controversially barred from this year's Tour de France because his Astana team were not invited by the organisers, has been out of action since winning the Tour of the Basque Country on April 12. Contador, who took a week's rest after his victory, explained that while he had resumed training he has been taking antibiotics for the toothache that plagued him during the Tout of the Basque Country.
Former Olympic track cyclist Tammy Thomas was found guilty of three counts of perjury on Friday. Thomas, the first defendant charged in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative investigation, was acquitted of two counts of lying to a federal grand jury investigating the BALCO case, but the jury in a federal district court found her guilty of three counts.
Editor's note: the following is an essay written by 1984 Olympic gold medalist Alexi Grewal. A full article on Grewal and his admitted use of performance enhancing drugs appears in the April 15 issue of VeloNews. Sons have a propensity to follow in their father’s footsteps. For that very reason I write this. My son, your son or daughter, should have the right to find the sport better than it is now or was in our day.
The organizer of next month’s three major spring classics named the 25 teams invited to participate in Paris-Roubaix, Fleche Wallone and Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Paris-Roubaix on Tuesday. As expected, the Astana team of defending Tour de France champion Alberto Contador was not included on the list issued by the Amaury Sport Organisation, the private firm that also organizes the Tour.
UCI chief pat McQuaid on Friday promised to back reigning Tour de France champion Alberto Contador should he decide to take legal action over his exclusion from this year's race. The tour's organisers, Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), ruled on February 13 that Contador's Astana team would be barred from competing in this year's race as a result of doping scandals over the past two years. But International Cycling Union (UCI) president McQuaid said the decision is unfair.
The third stage of the Volta a Valenciana ended on a controversial note Thursday as a misdirected peloton split between a highway and a frontage road in the decisive final 5km of the 166.5km climbing course around Ibi. Ruben Plaza (Benfica) stole away the leader’s jersey from José Iván Gutiérrez (Caisse d’Epargne) in one of the most bizarre mishaps in recent cycling history.
The Mailbag is a regular department on VeloNews.com. If you have a comment, an opinion or observation regarding anything you have read in VeloNews magazine or on VeloNews.com, write to webletters@insideinc.com. Please include your full name, hometown and state or nation. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. Writers are encouraged to limit their submissions to one letter per month.
Dear Readers,
Welcome to the latest edition of The Prologue, the weekly summary of news from the world of competitive cycling from your friends at VeloNews.com.
The Mailbag is a regular department on VeloNews.com. If you have a comment, an opinion or observation regarding anything you have read in VeloNews magazine or on VeloNews.com, write to webletters@insideinc.com. Please include your full name, hometown and state or nation. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. Writers are encouraged to limit their submissions to one letter per month.
Italian Ivan Basso, the sole cyclist to have been sanctioned in the initial stages of the Operación Puerto blood-doping affair, said the inquiry had left him "shattered." Speaking after Thursday's reopening of the Spanish doping inquiry, Basso told El Pais newspaper that the two-year ban he received had left him marooned. "I'm in a sort of hell at the moment: alone, abandoned by everyone and working on in silence," the 30-year-old said. "I made an error, I must pay for that and come back with my head held high."
The Operación Puerto blood-doping affair, which erupted in May 2006, will be reopened, Madrid prosecutors said on Thursday. Last year the case ground to a halt when a Spanish judge ordered it closed. Prosecutors asked an appeals court to review that decision, and a ruling is expected on Friday. The prosecutors' announcement, however, is a strong indication that the court will reopen the case.
Amaury Sport Organization, the company that owns the Tour de France announced Wednesday that the Astana team of defending champion Alberto Contador will not be invited to compete in that race or in any other event it organizes in 2008.
When Johan Bruyneel, Alberto Contador, Levi Leipheimer and many of their Discovery Channel colleagues switched allegiance to the Astana team last fall they knew there was a risk that their new team might be excluded from events organized Amaury Sport Organisation — including the 2008 Tour de France. Now that ASO has done just that, we aren’t surprised, but like UCI president Pat McQuaid, we “can’t understand” the logic of ASO bosses Patrice Clerc and Christian Prudhomme’s decision.
Alberto Contador never dreamed he would win the Tour de France last year. But he did, thanks in part to Michael Rasmussen’s tangle of lies, and now the Spanish climber is intent on proving to the world that he’s a worthy champion. But there are dark clouds on the horizon in Contador’s otherwise-sunny post-Tour world — the possibility that Tour organizers might follow the lead taken by the Giro d’Italia and leave Astana sitting on the sidelines. Contador, 25, simply says that he cannot imagine being left out of the Tour.
A Spanish appeals court is set to consider the fate of the Operación Puerto doping scandal Friday in a decision that will have major implications for cycling’s fight to clean up the sport. Three judges in Madrid’s Audiencia Province are expected to consider whether to reopen the investigation or take no action and leave the case permanently closed. With the slow hands of Spanish justice, it’s unclear how soon a decision will be released.
Nine ProTour teams have demanded immediate talks with the organizers of cycling's three grand tours after the Giro d’Italia denied entry to four of their number. Though the 18 ProTour teams are supposed to be included in the season's major races, Astana, Team High Road, Bouygues Telecom and Crédit Agricole all were denied invitations to the Giro in the wake of a dispute between major race organizers and the UCI.
Could Levi Leipheimer and defending champion Alberto Contador be left out of the 2008 Tour de France because of the bad-news legacy of the Astana team? That’s what French and Spanish media reports are suggesting as the Tour de France organization mulls its invitations for the upcoming edition. Sources say lingering questions over whether Contador is linked to the Operación Puerto investigation and Astana’s scandalous legacy from 2007 might prompt Tour organizers to leave the team out of the season’s most important race when invitations are announced in the coming weeks.
It was a rocky 2007 season for the three ProTour Spanish teams. Inconsistent results and nagging questions over the Puerto doping investigation overshadowed many of the highlights for the Spanish Armada during last year’s campaign. None of the three Spanish squads – Caisse d’Epargne, Saunier Duval-Scott and Euskaltel-Euskadi – managed to win a major tour or classic, though Samuel Sánchez saved what was an otherwise lackluster season for the Basque team with a late-surge in the Vuelta a España to finish third.
Tour de France champion Alberto Contador and 2006 ProTour winner Alejandro Valverde are to be called before the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) prosecutor Ettore Torri over their implication in the infamous Operación Puerto doping scandal. Torri said on Monday that he wanted to speak to certain foreign-based cyclists, as well as the man central to the whole sorry scandal, Dr Eufemiano Fuentes.
After more than a year of waiting for Spanish authorities to complete their work, Italy's anti-doping authority announced this week that it intends to take action against suspected offenders in the Operación Puerto doping scandal. Spanish judicial officials dropped charges against several riders in October of 2006, noting that use of performance-enhancing drugs was not illegal at the time of the alleged infractions. Other riders, including Alejandro Valverde and 2007 Tour de France winner Alberto Contador were cleared after a review of documents in the case.
It’s been a while since the editors of VeloNews chose a mountain bike racer as Cyclist of the Year — two years shy of a decade, to be exact. In the years following our choice of Frenchwoman Anne-Caroline Chausson in 1999, the sport of off-road racing steadily slipped into the shadow of its better-funded, better-organized cousin on the road.
The Mailbag is a regular department on VeloNews.com. If you have a comment, an opinion or observation regarding anything you have read in VeloNews magazine or on VeloNews.com, write to webletters@insideinc.com. Please include your full name, hometown and state or nation. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. Writers are encouraged to limit their submissions to one letter per month.
Rock Racing team owner Michael Ball is a passionate and polarizing figure.
Against a backdrop of falling television audiences and dwindling roadside support, the organizers of the Vuelta a España on Wednesday called for their shrinking fan base to rally behind the race once again as they unveiled the route for the 2008 edition. "This will be the Vuelta of hope, a chance for a new cycling," said race director Victor Cordero as he unveiled the 63rd edition of the Spanish national tour. The three-week, 3173km race begins August 30 in the southern city of Grenada and ends September 21 in Madrid. Its 21 stages include three time trials, among them a team time trial,
Levi Leipheimer likes what he sees in the new-fangled Tour de France route unveiled last week in Paris for the 95th edition of the grande boucle. Leipheimer says the interesting mix of shorter time trials and four summit finishes represents a perfect recipe for what he expects will be victory for his new home at Astana. He says whether it’s him or defending champ Alberto Contador stepping on the top rung remains to be seen. “It’s a great course for Alberto and me. We’re really looking forward to next year’s Tour,” Leipheimer told VeloNews in a phone interview from his home in California.
Don’t think that disgraced Giro d’Italia champion Ivan Basso is idly wasting his time while he serves out his two-year ban for links to the Operación Puerto doping scandal. The 29-year-old Italian is plotting his return when his ban ends October 24 next year and is already in contact with several teams for what will be a full racing schedule for the 2009 season. According to a story in La Gazzetta dello Sport, Basso has been staying busy since admitting to Italian anti-doping investigators in May that he was a client of Spanish doping doctor Eufemiano Fuentes, the alleged ringleader of the
Roberto Heras - the disgraced Spanish climber who saw his 2005 Vuelta a España victory stripped after he tested positive for EPO – vows to return to the professional peloton. His two-year ban ends October 27 and the 33-year-old insists he will be with a top team next season and wants to be in a host of major races on the international calendar. Heras says he’s considered offers from Spanish and foreign teams. “I am planning to return and there are several teams interested in me,” Heras told the Spanish daily El Mundo. “I never lost the rhythm of training and I never lost the idea that I
It’s going to take more than a nasty crash to keep Christian Vande Velde from finishing this year’s Vuelta a España. The 31-year-old American is racing what’s his last major European race in a Team CSC jersey before switching to the up-and-coming Slipstream squad for the 2008 season and he wants to go out on a winning note. “I didn’t want to stop the race. The truth is, I felt horrible and I’m still pretty beat up. I still don’t feel great,” Vande Velde told VeloNews. “I want to go out with CSC on a good note. I hope to feel better in the coming days.” Vande Velde crashed twice in the
Aaron Olson always seems to save the best for last. Last year, some of his best results came late in the 2006 campaign, capped by second in a Tour of Poland stage. The T-Mobile rider scored his best-ever result in a European stage race with third overall at the inaugural Tour of Ireland. Olson snatched second place in the race-winning breakaway in stage one and hung on to the podium spot in the surprisingly tough five-day Irish tour. “It’s not bad considering I crashed 10 days ago,” said Olson, referring to a nasty training spill in Spain. “It’s a nice way to finish off the European
Soler keeps lead at BurgosJuan Mauricio Soler (Barloworld) finished safely in the pack at Thursday’s 158km third stage to maintain his slender grip on the overall lead at the Vuelta a Burgos in northern Spain. French rider Aurélien Passeron (Acqua e Sapone) nipped Aivaras Baranauskas (Agritubel) after a seven-man break held off the peloton in the rolling stage into Aranda de Duero along some of Spain’s best wine country. Soler finished 31st with the main pack that roared in 54 seconds off the winner’s pace to retain the leader’s jersey a day after winning the decisive climb up Laguna de
Alberto Contador is on vacation this week, but he’ll probably be spending more time than he would like working the phone after last week’s news that his Discovery Channel team is disbanding at the end of the season. The standing Tour de France champion is without a secure future – not to mention most of the other riders and staff on the Discovery Channel payroll. Where Contador could likely end up depends on what kind of reception his new manager, Tony Rominger, receives from prospective ProTour teams. Doubts over Contador’s alleged links to the Operación Puerto investigation could
Alejandro Valverde headlines this week’s Vuelta a Burgos starting Tuesday in northern Spain in a race that’s replete with Vuelta a España favorites. The likes of Samuel Sánchez (Euskaltel-Euskadi) and José Ángel Gómez Marchante (Saunier Duval-Prodir) are using the five-day stage race as a trampoline for the Vuelta podium, but Valverde is skipping the Spanish grand tour to prepare especially for the world championships. Valverde disappointed Vuelta organizers last week when he said he would be skipping the September 1 start in Vigo, leaving the Spanish tour bereft of its 2006 podium
Tour de France winner Alberto Contador publicly declared he’s a clean rider in the face of increasing suspicions about his alleged links to the Operación Puerto blood-doping ring. On Friday, Contador took the extraordinary step of making a public statement to try to counter growing media antagonism in the wake of his impressive Tour victory. Contador declined to take questions from reporters. “I have never doped and I have never participated in an act of doping,” said Contador, reading from his prepared statement Friday. “I won the Tour clean. I cannot understand the attacks against me by
Despite one of the sport’s most impressive win records, the U.S.-based Discovery Channel team has failed in efforts to secure a new title sponsor and will cease operations at the end of the season. Tailwind Sports, the parent company of the team, announced Friday that the program will end with the 2007 cycling season. Tailwind officials were apparently unable to parlay a series of eight Tour de France victories over nine years into a satisfactory sponsorship arrangement. “Tailwind has had an amazing 10 years of success with U.S. Postal and more recently Discovery Channel as its title
Even winning the Tour de France couldn’t help Discovery Channel in its search to find a replacement title sponsor for beyond the 2007 season. Less than two weeks after Alberto Contador won the team’s eighth Tour in nine years, officials from Tailwind Sports officially threw in the towel in their hunt to procure a new sponsor. They blamed a laundry list of cycling’s ills for their failure to convince a sponsor to pony up an estimated $15 million per year to underwrite the ProTour team’s annual budget. “We couldn’t in good conscience ask someone to spend the sort of money that it would
Tour de France winner Alberto Contador has scheduled a press event this Friday in Spain, but says he will decline to answer reporters’ questions after he reads a prepared statement. Contador issued a release Wednesday notifying media of his plans to read a statement at the offices of Spain’s national sports council – the Consejo Superior de Deportes - in Madrid. Contador will be accompanied by Discovery Channel team director Johann Bruyneel. Since winning the 2007 Tour de France, Contador has been the subject of heightened scrutiny regarding his possible involvement with Eufemio Fuentes,
Tour de France winner Alberto Contador said Thursday that the forced exit of Danish cyclist Michael Rasmussen, which paved the way for his own victory, was fundamentally unfair and set a bad precedent for the sport. "I don't know what is really behind it, but I do know that what should not be possible is to be told in the middle of the race that you can't participate when there was no problem at the beginning," Contador said in an interview with radio Cadena Ser. "I would have liked to have won in another way," he added. Rasmussen was kicked off the Tour by his Rabobank team while
The Mailbag is a regular department on VeloNews.com. If you have a comment, an opinion or observation regarding anything you have read in VeloNews magazine or on VeloNews.com, write to webletters@insideinc.com. Please include your full name, hometown and state or nation. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. Writers are encouraged to limit their submissions to one letter per month. The letters published here contain the opinions of the submitting authors and should not be viewed as reflecting the opinions, policies or positions of VeloNews.com, VeloNews magazine or our parent company,
Just as Spanish cycling was celebrating the Tour de France victory of Alberto Contador, the breaking news Monday that Iban Mayo tested positive for EPO put a chill on Spain’s cycling renaissance. With six riders in the top 10 and Contador’s dramatic victory seemed to put Spanish cycling back on the forefront of the European peloton, but Mayo’s positive doping test threw cold water on the fiesta. Saunier Duval-Prodir quickly suspended the Basque climber after receiving notification from the UCI that Mayo revealed traces of the banned blood booster in a anti-doping control taken on the Tour’s
Alberto Contador, the 24-year-old surprise winner of a dope-scarred Tour de France, represents the hope of a "new cycling," Spanish media wrote Monday. "Champion of hope," wrote sports daily AS on its front page below a photo of the cyclist wearing a red and yellow Spanish flag around his neck taken after he won the three-week race on Sunday. "Contador was crowned in Paris as the symbol of the new cycling," it added. The rider for the American Discovery Channel team was the first Spaniard to win the crown since the last of Miguel Indurain's five titles in 1995 and the ninth Spaniard
Throw in the two rest days, and Alberto Contador's winning margin at the 2007 Tour de France is destined to equal one tick of the watch per day. Those 23 seconds will represent the second smallest final time difference in the race's 94 renditions, trailing only Greg LeMond's eight-second triumph over Laurent Fignon in 1989. This year's near-record breaker came to pass during a breathtaking stage-19 time trial that left the outcome in doubt until the final kilometer, when Contador narrowly held off stiff challenges from Cadel Evans and Levi Leipheimer to maintain his slim overall lead.
In the chaotic hours before the start of the 2006 Tour de France, officials from the UCI and the Tour de France were frantically scouring a cryptic 36-page facsimile sent by Spain’s Guardia Civil that summarized evidence of one of Europe’s largest and most elaborate blood doping rings. Officials received the fax on Thursday -- just 36 hours before some 189 riders would start the opening prologue in Strausbourg -- and were under the gun to match a series of veiled, soon-to-be-famous codenames to the Tour peloton. The summary document – written in Spanish – included the most explosive and
Perhaps Alberto Contador is just too young and too green to realize precisely what he is on the cusp of achieving if he can drop Michael Rasmussen for good on the slopes of the Aubisque. At just 24, he’s already being hailed as cycling’s next Lance Armstrong (or Miguel Indurain, in the Spanish press). Contador hopes to live up to the pedigree in Wednesday’s decisive climbing stage culminating on the HC steeps of the Aubisque. “I have nothing to lose,” Contador said during Tuesday’s rest day, the Tour’s second. “I will risk all to attack Rasmussen and try to win the Tour,” he
A former amateur mountain-bike racer alleged Thursday that Tour de France yellow-jersey holder Michael Rasmussen (Rabobank) attempted to trick him into carrying illegal doping products to Europe in 2002. Whitney Richards, 38, a one-time Colorado-based cross-country racer, told VeloNews that in March of 2002, Rasmussen asked him to transport a box containing cycling shoes. But the shoebox, according to Richards, actually contained bags of an American-made human blood substitute. None of the information Richards provided VeloNews involves allegations of current doping. Asked by VeloNews
It’s been a long decade for Spanish cycling fans. By the 1990s, fans south of the Pyrénées became accustomed to toasting victory in Paris with wins by Pedro Delgado in 1988 and Miguel Indurain with five straight yellow jerseys from 1991-95. It’s been a long wait ever since. Riders such as Abraham Olano, Fernandro Escartín and Joseba Beloki all came close, but could never quite live up to the Indurain legacy. The 2007 Tour marks the return of the Spanish Armada. With four riders securely in the top 10 coming out of the Alps, many are hoping that this is the year to see a Spanish spoken
If history is any indication, the 2007 Tour de France will be full of surprises. Whenever there are no former winners on the start line — as will be the case this year — anything can happen. That was certainly the case with last year’s race, which had the largest number of surprises since Lance Armstrong took the first of his seven victories in 1999 — the only other time in the past 30 years when there were no previous winners in the field. While uncertainty is a given, there are still favorites for the overall. The Astana team is led by two former podium finishers, German Andreas Klöden
Discovery Channel captain Levi Leipheimer is okay despite a fall in Sunday’s final stage of the Dauphiné Libéré. Sport director Johan Bruyneel said Leipheimer wasn’t seriously injured when he slipped on rain-soaked roads while attacking for victory with about 4km to go to Annecy. A frustrated Leipheimer could only watch Alexandre Vinokourov (Astana) ride past him and secure the stage victory. “He’s fine. He hit the side of the round-about. There’s no problem,” Bruyneel told VeloNews. “It was very slippery and he was risking a little bit because he was by himself.” The defending Dauphiné