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Friends, it is with a heavy heart that I write this post. You may remember from my previous post that I was fairly confident that Cadel Evans would be standing in a pink jersey in Verona, the triumphant victor of the Giro d’Italia! It turns out however that I was mostly wrong.
Mostly?
Photo: AP
Yes, mostly. For you see that I stated that it would be down to three cyclists, Evans, Sastre and an Italian guy called Ivan Basso. Now that the dice has been cast, the journey completed and the final result revealed we can see that I was slightly correct. Ivan Basso, Italian Liquigas cyclist was crowned with the glory.
Sigh. Evans, will he forever be the bridesmaid? Will he ever win a grand tour?
It is not fair to be too critical of Evans though, he attacked consistently and didn’t sit back like so many other cyclists can do. He showed that he has the strength and mind to stay with the best of them but he can’t do it alone. You may then ask, “Well what was the main difference between Evans and Basso?” Their teams. BMC is just not in the same league as Liquigas. But BMC is young and inexperienced, they will lean and grow from this Tour and will only get stronger.
Photo: AFP
And so another grand tour opportunity has slipped through Evans’ fingers, but he does not leave the Giro empty handed, sure he didn’t win the Pink Jersey but he does leave with the red points jersey allocated to the person who accumulates the most points (won at stage intervals and finishes). This will hopefully soften the disappointment, but not by much.
Though Evans didn’t win it was still the best grand tour result Australia has ever had with all three minor jerseys being taken by Aussies! Evans won the red points jersey, Matthew Lloyd was the king of the mountains and young gun Richie Porte took out the best young rider jersey. If Evans had won it would have been a clean sweep!
It may have even resulted to international cycling getting a 5 second mention on a major network. Maybe even a spot on channel ten’s Rugby League Tonight… ah, I mean Sports Tonight.
Photo: S Sutherland
This will make the Tour more interesting though. Basso has shown that he is now a real contender and he knows it! He won’t be riding in the Tour for the scenery. He stated:
“Winning this pink jersey has given me back my confidence, and my ambition. I’ll go to the Tour with humility, but, with a solid team behind me, with belief that I can compete with the best.”
Though I don’t get the feeling he has thought much about it, considering that he also said:
“I haven’t even looked at the race route, but that’s the first thing I will do when I get home on Monday.”
Good plan, Ivan, good plan. If you’ve googled your name and are reading this post then you probably want to check out this entry:
A Beginners Guide to le Tour de France: the 2010 Route
Well the next truly major event is the Tour. All roads lead to Rome but all cyclists ride to Paris! We are only 31 days away from the start and so I will now turn my attention back to the beginners guide to the Tour series. I will report some old stuff as well as some new stuff so watch this space.
In other news some stuff happened with Alejandro Valverde. One of the guys I said would be good to keep your eyes on. But 1 admission of being wrong will suffice for today.
The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the French, they’ve fought a couple of wars and still haven’t worked it all out.
Kiwis do not like Australians and the sentiments are easily returned – as Mitchell Johnson’s head butt ‘gift’ to Scott Styris clearly demonstrated in last night’s cricket match.
Lithuania can’t stand Latvia.. but lets not even go there!
Everyone hates the Americans.
Well, in cycling, the Spanish hate the Italians, the Italians hate the Spaniards.
Hopefully none of these racially based hatreds come as a surprise to you. Countries just sometimes don’t like each other, and this is no more clearly seen than in professional cycling. In the cycling community unofficial national rivalries will always grow and be discussed to no end by the media. It is good fun and can add an extra dimension to the sport, even if it is just the media’s speculation.
7 consecutive wins.. who the man?
Everyone hated America, for example, when Lance Armstrong won 7 consecutive Tours, consistently beating Europe’s best cyclists ( oh and also of course when Bush was president, that didn’t really help Americans who ventured out of the deep South into the international community).
These days, however, the big rivalry that the media is focussing on is between Spain and Italy. These two nations have long, proud, impressive histories when it comes to professional cycling. Thus when you ask a Spaniard or an Italian, they will always say that their cyclists are the best in the world. Completely short sighted, biased and childish!
On a small side note, everyone knows Australian cyclists are the best in the world!
Alejandro valverde
Anyway, tensions really started to simmer when the Italian Olympic Committee decided to ban the home grown Spanish hero Alejandro Valverde from riding on Italian soil for 2 years because of his alleged participation in the operation puerto doping scandal. (By the way, the evidence is pretty minimal and Valverde has been cleared by all other nations to race except Italy). This ban meant that Valverde couldn’t race in the Tour de France last year as one stage went through Italy.
Why is Italy being so harsh to Valverde?
well, the Spanish hate the Italians, the Italians hate the Spaniards!
The Spanish however rarely forget!
Right now Alejandro Valverde, Dennis Menchov, Lance Armstrong and a host of other great riders are riding in the 5 stage Vuelta of Murcia in Spain.
But all Italian teams were banned from competing in it as a direct retaliation to the Italian Olympic Committee’s Alejandro Valverde ban last year.
Sorry, not banned. In professional cycling a team has to be invited to compete in a Tour, I guess the invites to the Italian teams were simply lost in the mail!
Bummer.
Anyway, I am looking forward to seeing what Italy will do in response in the coming months, probably sneak into Valverde’s room on the night before the Tour de France starts and put ribbons on his handlebars – the ultimate insult in professional cycling!
In other news, watch out for Armstrong’s time trial (TT) performance, it should be a good indicator to see how fit he is for the Tour. He hasn’t raced since the Tour Down Under in January and although they are saying he is fitter than he was last year it will be good to see how he performs in the TT.
The Vuelta a Murica takes place from 3-7 March.
P.s. Italians arent the only ones who hate Alberto Contador…
Alejandro Valverde
This may surprise you, but Lance Armstrong is not necessarily my favuorite rider! I also really like another rider called Alejandro Valverde. He is a Spanish rider, but unlike that other Spanish rider who shall not be named (lets just call him ‘pooh face Contador’) he isn’t a super jerk. And being a good Spanish cyclist who isn’t a super jerk is genuinely hard, he is going against a very strong history and culture of jerkism coming out of Spain!
Valverde in the 2008 Tour de France. Photo by Bryn Lennon/Getty Images Europe
Anyway if there is one thing you know about Valverde it is that he has been accused by the Italian national Olympic Committee for being a drug cheat and being involved in the infamous Operacion Puerto doping affair. Anyway the Italians over exaggerated (as they can sometimes do) and banned him from racing in Italy for 2 years, he wasn’t banned from racing anywhere else… just Italy. Unfortunately that meant he couldn’t cycle in last years tour as one of the stages passed through Italian territory. Now before you judge him or call him a cheat, just remember that pretty much every cyclist who has ever ridden professionally has been accused of being a drug cheat. The clear example is Lance Armstrong, he has never failed or refused to take a drug test, his biological passport is clean and people still persist to call him a cheat! unfortunately in professional cycling you’re usually guilty until proven innocent!
Anyway, back to Valverde, so Valverde, full of anger and wanting to prove himself went out and won the 2009 Vuelta a Espana (the Tour of Spain) showing that he isn’t going to be affected by the accusations and that he has nothing to hide.
Anyway the reason I mention Valverde is because he has just won the Tour de Med on Sunday. A decent feat. the race is of course set on the Mediterranean, but this year there was snow and rain! Quite a dangerous tour.
Although he is certainly not a clear favourite for the Tour this year he is a very capable, strong cyclist who has a good team behind him! He will also be looking for revenge after not being allwoed in the Tour last year! His Vuelta resulta nd this recent result show that he will be someone to watch
You know what Armstrong is thinking... "pooh face!"
P.s. the other reason he is better than pooh face contador?
Valverde: ”I thought about all the work that my teammates had done, throughout the week as well as today. I knew I couldn’t disappoint them. They set the rhythm for the whole climb and I finished the stage in second place, which was enough to take the overall.”
Well the long awaited for Tour Down Under is now finished! What a week of great cycling and big stars: Armstrong, Valverde, Evans, Sanchez, McEwen! The Tour covered over 800 kilometres and attracted over 750,000 fans – which is pretty impressive for a pro tour race in Australia!
1 André Greipel THR 18:47:5.0
2 Luis León Sánchez GCE 18:47:16.0
3 Greg Henderson SKY 18:47:20.0
4 Robbie McEwen KAT 18:47:22.0
5 Luke Roberts MRM 18:47:22.0
The Tour down Under is the first event on the pro tour calendar and from it you can start to get a picture of how certain cyclists will fare in the season ahead – and more importantly, get to see who will be the main contenders in July! So without further ado, some reflections from the past week of cycling.
Andre Griepel
Andre Griepel (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
Griepel was strong, dominant and ultimately deserved his second Tour Down Under victory. Griepel also won in 2008 but last year crashed out when he ran into a parked police motor bike at high speed. Griepel took the first two stages of the race and then strategically prevented any breakaway (including one with Armstrong on day 4 and one with Evans and Valverde on stage 5) from taking away his lead. These stages also showed that the HTC Columbia team is working really well together and will definitely be a strong presence in this years Tour. The Tour Down Under is a very specific race, it is well suited to good sprinters and Griepel is a great sprinter, however I don’t think we will see too much of him in the mountains of Italy or France. But an impressive win none the less!
Cadel Evans
There is a dreaded curse that befalls all riders who win the world champions rainbow jersey. It is a curse that makes all who wear the jersey unable to perform at the highest level and thus fade back into the obscurity of the peloton.
Cadel Evans: World Champion (Photo by Getty)
Well it seems the curse has been broken! Cadel Evans, riding for his new team (BMC) seemed to have new legs and a new vision! He was riding aggressively at the Willunga stage and nearly took the overall lead! He finished in 6th place overall – which is quite impressive considering that this was not a Tour that he had in his sights to win. Evans showed some impressive form in the third stage after strategically placing himself well for a 3rd place sprint finish and then again in the fifth stage when he was part of a bold break – that nearly gave him to whole Tour! Evans has said that he is planning to gear his season around the Giro d’Italia – which is a race he hasn’t ridden since 2002. Evans has left his old team (Lotto) after repeated (understandable) frustration at his teammates to spearhead the new BMC team. However the BMC team is not considered a ‘top tier’ team, so there is no guarantee that they will be invited to the Tour de France. But considering that Evans wears the rainbow and after his impressive performance at the Tour Down Under it would be a big surprise if that didn’t earn BMC the invitation. Evans is hungry to do well in the Tour this year, he commented this week that: “There’s unfinished business at the Giro and Tour for me, and that’s been years of culminating and whetting my appetite.” All up I think Evans is going to be something special this season.
Lance Armstrong
Armstrong finished in a very respectable 25th place, 16 seconds off the leader. The aim for team RadioShack was not to win the Tour but to come away with a stage win, thus Armstrong won’t be disappointed with his finish. At the conclusion of stage 3 Armstrong didn’t have the legs to stay with the younger Portuguese champion Manuel Cardoso, the small bumpy mountains of South Australia don’t suite the 7 times Tour champion who feels more comfortable riding up a long winding mountain (yes, you heard me right, he prefers big mountains with long uphill sections to smaller mountains with shorter climbs – a genuine weirdo!) Armstrong is in a stronger position that he was last year to aim his sights at an eights Tour victory! Plus you can bet your bottom dollar that he does not want Contador to win again (along with anyone else who lives outside of Spain). Armstrong commented earlier on in the Tour that he is feeling good and enjoying the speed.
Team Sky
The new British team really turned heads this week as they book ended the tour with impressive Stage victories. The team showed impressive teamwork that rivalled the crack Columbia HTC team and of course Team RadioShack. Team work is important in professional cycling, and a team that is working will together will always beat a great individual that is in a poor team (Note Evan’s Tour last year). SKY will be a team to watch this season as they sontinue to make waves in the pro tour circuit. It was also good to see an Aussie take out a stage win. Sky’s Chris Sutton took out the final stage of the Tour – always nice to see an Aussie winning a stage!
Fly V Australia
David Kemp – riding for Uni SA also had a good week. He usually rides for the Aussie team Fly V Australia, but this week was riding for Uni SA as they always grant a sport to the national road cycling champion (Kemp finished second at the road cycling titles but the first place rider – Meyer – had other commitments). The hope is for Fly V Australia to become Australia’s first pro tour team! The thinking is to move pro for the 2011 season! Anyway, with the kind of cycling that Kemp displayed and some of the other younger Aussies, it is definitely time for an Australian team at the pro level!
Anyway, there you have it! Some quick unrefined reflections from the past week of cycling! It has definitely made me excited for the season ahead! Bring on the Tour of Qatar in Feb and the Paris-Nice in March!
So Liz and I participated in the 2009 Sydney to the Gong bike ride for MS. Between us we raised $680, and our team (Liz’s school) managed to raise an impressive $19,057!
It was an absolutely awesome day to do it, the rain had cleared up and the the sun was shining brightly!
The first thing to say was that there were just so many cyclists! This year they capped the event at 10,000 cyclists but it felt like there could have been 100,000 cyclists. They came in all shapes and sizes, but my clear favourites were the “Smurfs”. I don’t know where they were from but they looked awesome!
We cycled down the highway until we went into the shady national park at Waterfall. There was a seriously fun downhill section and then it meandered up and then down for a while. Check out the pictures an videos.
This is a video of me interviewing liz while we were riding through the National Park. It is just like the Tour!!
I am slightly embarrassed to admit this, but this is a video I took while punishing an uphill section! I may have been imagining that I was Alejandro Valverde while I was doing it! But seeing as the Tourmalet will be such an important part of next year’s Tour, I though a bit of video on a climb would be good to include!
About 20km into the ride Liz decided to do the old ‘drink and ride’. This turned out to be a poor decision as she lost balance and ended up on the wrong side of a fight with gravity! She grazed her elbow, hip and hands… never fun! But just like a pro cyclist she got back on her bike and finished the ride! Check out her wounds…
One of the realities about cycling is that sooner or later everyone falls off their bike!
Anyway after cycling for a while we left the national park at Otford and suddenly we were looking out accoss an amazing view of the ocean
There were all sort of cyclists – including a fair few tandem bike riders! How awesome is that!
Now I know what you are thinking: How could they keep going? Surely they would have run out of energy! Well I am glad that you brought that up! Liz and I did have a little help form this:
No, its not an illegal substance, its an energy bar! Its Musashi “Growling Dog” and it tastes a lot like dog food would taste if you ever ate. Having said this though, it did indeed give us a boost of energy every time we blocked our noses and forced ourselves to eat a mouthful!
Finally after about 3 hours we arrived in Wollongong to a vast array of colours and people. There were literally thousands of people in this park cheering you on as you arrived at the finish line! Liz and I raced for the finish line and it was pretty close too! But you’ll have to ask us who won!
Well there you have it! I hope you enjoyed the pictures and videos! Liz and I certainly enjoyed cycling it!
