Skip to main content

Vuelta de Espana Preview

By
Vuelta Preview

Here's a collection of various news stories related to the final Grand Tour of the year, the Vuelta de Espana:
  • Pez Cycling News has a great overview of the course and the stages
  • Looks like Michael Rasmussen won't be able to find a sponsor in time to ride the Vuelta. 
  • 12 Protour teams have agreed to a new doping pact. The teams will face additional out of competition testing (15 blood tests and 15 urine tests throughout the year). The teams are: Liquigas, Team CSC, T-Mobile, Rabobank, Euskaltel, Caisse d'Epargne, Saunier-Duval, Quick-Step Innergetic, Lampre-Fondital, Team Milram, Predictor-Lotto and Gerolsteiner. Full story here.
  • Alberto Contador, winner of this year's Tour de France, will not be racing at the Vuelta, but will be watching it closely. Stijn Devolder will be Disco's team captain for the race.
  • Team Milram has confirmed that sprinters Alessandro Petacchi and Eric Zabel will be going to the race, aiming for stage wins. 
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Rasmussen Shopping For A New Team

By
Yahoo Sports reports that Michael Rasmussen is looking for a new team to finsish the season. He has his sights set on the Giro di Lombardia, the final single day race of the season.  He met with the director of the Acqua & Sapone team on Wednesday for about 30 minutes. Director Palmiro Masciarelli states, "He wants to finish the season with us. He showed me all his papers. The problem is with the Danish federation."  You'll recall that Rasmussen was kicked out of the Tour and off of his team for allegedly lying about his whereabouts to evade doping tests. Masciarelli states that Rasmussen should not have been dismissed because he missed two tests, but if I recall correctly, the dismissal was over the lying, not the missed tests.  If I was a team director, I would be very reluctant to add a rider who was under such heavy scrutiny. In today's environment, one bad egg could bring down an entire team.
Read more

TDF - It Was Too Good to be True

By
Yesterday, I posted about Alexandre Vinokourov's amazing wins in Saturday's time trial and on Monday's stage from Foix to Loudenvielle.  Today, the news comes that Vino has tested positive for homologous  blood transfusion after Saturday's time trial . He was immediately dismissed by his team and his entire team has dropped out of the Tour.  At this point, I can't help but think that this is going to ultimately affect many of the other teams' sponsorship, media coverage of the race and many other things. I had hoped that we could make it through this year without any huge scandals. One man is not going to bring down the entire tour, but he did just make life far more difficult for the entire professional cycling community. I can see the effects of this rippling down to the developmental teams, making it more difficult for talented riders to progress.  
Read more

Vuelta Stage 11 plus other news

By
Vuelta de Espana - Stage 11: The day started with a two man breakaway at the 8km mark that saw it's biggest gap at the 40km point. The peloton was taking it easy, working only hard enough to let the break not get any bigger.  At 120km, the peloton started to reel in the break and they had made up the 3 minute advantage by km 150.   The Milram and Lampre-Fondital teams, along with Rabobank, did the majority of the work to make up the break. By the final 10 km, the speeds racked up considerably, with T-Mobile & Milram leading a long, single file peloton.  Milram took over the lead in the final 2 kilometers. Zabel did the work to set up Pettachi to take the final sprint at the last corner. Pettachi racks up his 18th career win today at the Vuelta.  coming by teammate Erik Zabel in the final meters of today's stage. Paolo Bettini took second, Zabel third.  The G.C. stays much the same with Menchov, Efimkin, Evans, Sastre and Miquez in the Top 5 spots.  Other News: Ivan Dominque...
Read more