Mendrisio, Switzerland is where it is all happening this week, with two world TT titles already decided, another today and then a weekend full of road racing. There’s some interesting Calendar news and The Netherlands has done a “Contador” and bagged three Grand Tours in a row. It’s rainbow frenzy in The Trash today, so let’s get to it.
The Rainbows Have Arrived
The Worlds are well and truly underway with the Under 23 men and women racing yesterday and today the day when we find out if there is anyone out there in the entire wide world who can ride a time trial bike faster than Fabian Cancellara.
Following today’s men’s 40km time trial, Friday will be a rest day at the championships in Mendrisio, Switzerland, and then it the Women and Under 23 men on Saturday and the Men’s professional road race championship on Sunday.
Bobridge Takes Under 23s
For the old “amateur” category that morphed into the Under 23s when cycling became “open”, The Worlds was always a good proving ground to pick up a good result and pick up a good professional contract. The times they are a changing, and it’s now not unusual for riders to bag a medal in the Under 23s and stay in the development category for one more season to make sure they are really ready for the pro’s. On the other side of the coin, it’s also not unusual for the medal winners to already be signed, sealed and on their way to the paid ranks before they even stepped on their bikes to start the race.
It was a case of the latter in yesterday’s Under 23 time trial with new Garmin Slipstream recruit, Jack Bobridge adding a gold medal and a world (road) champions jersey to his impressive 2009 trophy collection.
The 20 year old Jayco-AIS rider posted a time of 40min44.79sec for the 33.2km distance to finish a clear 18.73sec ahead of second placed Nelson Oliviera of Portugal with Germany's pre-race favourite Patrick Gretsch third at 27.66sec.
Bobridge, who has been nicknamed “Jacky Bobby” by new team boss Jonathan Vaughters, is the first Australian to claim the U23 time trial crown and it caps off a remarkable season for the youngster. He won both the U23 time trial and U23 road race crowns at the Australian Championships and notched up another six wins on the road including stages in the Tour of Japan and the Thuringen Tour in Germany. He also claimed two silver medals (individual pursuit and team pursuit) at the Track World Championships in March.
“I've been to some big events already as a young guy - Olympics and that - and have learned to deal with big pressure and expectations over the years and I know when to put my head down and when I need a break," Bobridge explained, taking about his decision to take time off in the middle of the season. “I've trained with Ian McKenzie (Australian track endurance coach) and there's been times when Ian has really pushed me to the absolute limit - where sometimes you want to give it up but it's made me stronger and stronger and he's taught me to deal with great pressure and bring myself up to an event. I've put all that experience to work over the past two months and it's brought me a sensational win.”
Bobridge still has another appointment to consider before he can concentrate on his future professional career and that is Saturday’s Under 23 road race championships.
“If we can get another result it would be great and we have the squad to do it,” Bobridge said. “Leigh Howard's been winning everything and we have some other awesome riders who could do the same thing. We'll look after each other 100 percent and see what we can do on Saturday."
2009 has been a break out year for Bobridge and after creating a stir at the Tour Down Under when he was invited to join Lance Armstrong on a training ride, the young Aussie has let his results do the talking for the rest of the season. Back in May when he sat down for an interview with PEZ , Bobridge said that even though he was headed for a road contract in a ProTour squad, he would still have his sights firmly focussed on the track at the London Olympics.
Armstrong Grabs Another
While Jeannie Longo’s career record is probably better than quite a few countries (over 1,000 career wins), the ‘veteran’ Frenchwoman was not able to hold onto the third place position she held at the race’s halfway point and it was another former world champ who stood on top of the victory dais to claim the second rainbow jersey of the championships.
In what might be a good omen for Fabian Cancellara today, the current women’s Olympic time trial champion, Kirsten Armstrong, has now added the 2009 TT World Championship to go with her rainbow jersey from Salzburg, Austria in 2006.
Armstrong, representing the USA, beat home Italy’s Noemi Cantele by nearly a minute, with Linda Melanie Villumsen of Denmark taking the final medal on offer for the day
“It does not matter what year and how many times you are world champion, it is always the best feeling in the world,” Armstrong said after the race yesterday. “Today [Wednesday] was an amazing day. The stars were aligned and of course I had a little bit of luck on my side. I could not have become World Champion today without riding the fastest equipment possible.”
Armstrong rides for the Cervélo Test Team women’s squad but will be retiring from the sport on Saturday, following the road race.
Men’s Road Race
With the defending champion, an “almost” home town advantage and one of the inform men of the moment leading the team, what better place to start than with the Italians (again...)
Italy:Ciclonews.it carried a good wrap of the pre-race comments from the Italian National team with Damiano Cunego saying, “I’m happy with my victories [in the Vuelta] and Italy is a squad, like Spain, with many leaders. You also need to watch out for Cancellara, the home town favourite, and Gilbert who has come out of the Vuelta with good form. These names are amongst the most dangerous.”
One thing that Cunego has said, among all of the declarations of his team mates that “everyone is strong” and “it’s a great team” is that he hopes there will be honesty in the squad on race day.
“The only thing is sincerity. People have got to say who is feeling really good and who isn't,” Eurosport quotes the former Giro winner as saying, “Then you can plan. Sincerity is important. You must always be willing to sacrifice. It will be the same this year.”
As for the man who is currently wearing the rainbow jersey, “I’m clam” said the defending champ, Alessandro Ballan. “I have nothing to prove in Mendrisio as I have already won a world title. I know the Swiss course well and it is much harder than Varese.”
Switzerland: While the men’s TT has not been run as I type this, I fully expect that by the time you read this, Fabian Cancellara will have completed the first half of what he intends on being an historic double on home soil. While the road race may well be a hill (or seven) too far for the time trialling Olympic champ, he should not be discounted in the main event on Sunday.
This week, Ed Hood spoke to Cancellara’s Swiss team mate Rubens Bertogliati and he outlined the difficulties of the 19 lap race to be held just 15km from where he lives.
“The circuit gives you no time to recover; the climbs in themselves do not seem difficult, but the last five or six laps will be very hard. On the second climb, I think that the gear will be 39 x 21 with the strong riders on the 19, perhaps. It is for the man with a strong sprint after a lot of climbing – the total climbing is 4,655 metres over the 262 kilometres.”
Rubens might be keeping team strategy close to his chest for Sunday, so no mention of his own team leader in the favourites, but he does concur with the majority of pundits in that Valverde and Cunego are probably the standouts for Gold, with Boasson Hagen also worth keeping a close eye on.
Belgium: A gentlemen’s agreement on the roads of Spain looks to have sorted the issue of team leadership in the Belgian camp.
Sporza reports that Philippe Gilbert spoke to Tom Boonen at the Vuelta and outlined a strategy that should see Belgium in with a good chance of a win both this year and beyond.
“This is a race for the climbers,” said Gilbert, who will also be in with a chance thanks to his ‘classics’ abilities. “If the race is hard, then Tom will ride for me. The next two world championships are for the sprinters and there, I will ride for him.”
Great Britain: Interesting, but maybe not surprising, was the announcement by the British camp that Mark Cavendish would not be taking part in the road race this Sunday. The Isle of Man rider, who won six stages of this year’s Tour de France recently withdrew from the Tour of Missouri (but only after adding a few stages to his tally there) with a chest infection and has not recovered enough to be racing this weekend in Switzerland.
While the GB squad will be led by David Millar (with Wiggins concentrating on the time trial today), recent “first pro race” winner Ben Swift told PEZ’s Ed Hood that the course is likely to result in just a small group arriving at the finish.
“I think there will only be about 20 finishers, there are 19 laps with two climbs each lap – that’s 38 climbs giving 4,600 metres of climbing. It’s basically up, down, up, down – off the first descent, there’s a dead corner at the bottom; if you’re not in the first 20 you’ll be stopped. Off the second climb there’s about two-and-a-half kilometres to the finish; it’s very deceptive – open, exposed and will be extremely hard on the last laps.”
Joining Millar and Swift will be Stephen Cummings, Russ Downing, Chris Froome, Roger Hammond, Dan Lloyd, Ian Stannard and Geraint Thomas (Barloworld).
Worlds Shake-Up On The Way
With Geelong, near Melbourne in Australia hosting the road world championships next year and Copenhagen in Denmark playing host in 2011, the next city to welcome the Rainbow circus was announced yesterday at the UCI management committee meeting in Mendrisio.
Not only will the Dutch province of Limburg host the 2012 championships, but that year’s events will be the first of a new 10day cycling festival that includes both national team and trade team events.
By making the championships a weeklong event, UCI boss Pat McQuaid said that he hoped to make it an “annual cycling festival for the whole cycling family” including a mass participation cyclo sportive ride.
The championships will open with a men’s and women’s team time trial, but instead of being contested by riders from the same nation, it will be run in trade teams. Up until last year there was a ProTour team time trial event and it seems the UCI is keen to get team sponsors (and team money) more involved in the championships.
Tour De France Route
While it is still a few weeks before Ed Hood packs his bags and heads to Paris for the presentation of the 2010 Tour de France route, a few snippets were unveiled this week about the race’s start in The Netherlands and Belgium.
The prologue time trial and first road stage will both start in Rotterdam, with the Tour returning to The Netherlands for the fifth time since 1954, which was also the first time the French race started outside France.
The opening individual time trial will start from the south side of Rotterdam (Zuidplein) and head north taking in the Erasmus Bridge where there is sure to be plenty of wind to keep the riders busy. The route will then wind back up the course of the New Meuse River with the transfer back to the left bank made via the two bridges that cross the “Nordereiland” peninsula. To arrive at the finish the riders will then proceed in the opposite direction along the same avenue.
The first road stage will also start in Rotterdam and head to the Belgian capital of Brussels via the windswept regions along the North Sea. With the Tour only two days old, there could already be riders who find their GC hopes in trouble if the wind and rain arrive on the narrow coastal roads.
The Giro are also getting in on the Dutch Act in 2010, with the opening stage of the Italian race being held on Saturday May 8 in Amsterdam and then the opening road stage being run from there to Utrecht. The Monday stage will be from Utrecht to Middelburg in Zeeland.
While The Netherlands shares the ENECO tour with Belgium and sometimes Luxembourg and only has one classic to call its own, local cycling fans must be pretty happy to have three grand Tours in a row (Vuelta ’09, Giro ‘10 and TdF ’10) all starting in their own back yard
The full route of Le Tour will be kept under wraps until the last Thursday in October and once that date is passed, some eight months out from the race, the towns and cities the race passes along the way will be free to make announcements on the particular festivities they plan for the visit of the world’s biggest annual sporting event.
Contador To QuickStep?
Well, there is a consistent rumour doing the rounds (with parts even appearing in the Daily Mail newspaper in the UK) that Alberto Contador is off to Garmin as part of a three way deal. The supposed deal is that Wiggins is going to Sky, several million dollars will go from Sky to Garmin as compensation and then the money will be used to get Contador from Astana to Garmin.
The rumours are not new and at various stages over the past weeks each of the various parts have (sometimes simultaneously) been confirmed by some elements of the press and denied by the parties involved.
A new twist to the tale is the question of Team Astana’s ProTour licence. As Seldo mentioned in ET on Monday, there is no guarantee that Astana will even have a ProTour licence in 2010 and beyond and when it looked like Vinokourov might retire and take over a management role at the team, it has been reported by L’Equipe that the UCI basically said “if this happens, you are history”.
Now it seems like the “done deal” with Garmin, might not have actually been quite so “done” as QuickStep have renewed their interest in Contador in a much more public way, with team boss Patrick Lefevere confirming to the Gazet van Antwerpen that he has been in discussion with both the rider and his manager.
QuickStep is waiting to see if Astana receive their ProTour licence, with Lefevere saying, “If they do not, we would have the opportunity to recruit Contador. We are in concrete talks with him. I have been negotiating with his manager. I have had two interviews with Contador himself, the last one on Friday.”
Roberts Heading To ProTour
Aussie track and time trial specialist, Luke Roberts will be back in the PorTour next year after signing a one year deal with German outfit, Team Milram.
After racing for three years under Bjarne Riis at CSC, Roberts has spent the last two seasons riding in Germany with Continental Team Kuota Indeland.
“I am very happy to have the chance to start next year in the ProTour with Team MILRAM” the 2004 Olympic track champion. “I especially want to use my experience in the Spring Classics. And I am sure that I can help the sprinters decide the race for themselves.”
In signing Roberts, Team Milram have added a highly decorated, vastly experienced and very versatile rider to their squad. The South Australian, who now lives in Cologne in Germany, has been an Olympic champion in the teams pursuit in Athens, a three times world champion in the same discipline in 2002, ‘03 and ‘04 and finished the Tour de France for CSC in 2005.
“Roberts is an option for the difficult spring one-day races,” said Raoul Liebregts, Human Resource Manager at Team MILRAM. “He is also willing to do the important support work, especially, in the lead-outs for our sprinters around Gerald Ciolek.”
UCI News
As part of the World Road Championships in Mendrisio Switzerland, the UCI ProTour Council met and have finalised the dates of the two new Canadian events for 2010.
The Cycling Grand Prix in Québec and Montreal, Canada, will take place on 10 and 12 September, respectively and each year, the event in Québec will precede the Montreal race.
The Montreal Cycling Grand Prix will be contested over 200 km, with an accumulated gradient of 2,800 m, whereas the Québec course will cover 189 km and a total accumulated gradient of 3,000 m.
The Management Committee also decided to accept the UCI Road Commission’s recommendation to gradually phase out the use of two-way radio for all categories of rider. The members were of the opinion that two-way radio distorts the nature of cycle sport. They also took into account the desire expressed by the majority of those involved in cycling to prohibit the equipment. A ban on two-way radio is already in place for the Junior and Under-23 categories. It was agreed that a calendar for implementation of this measure would be drawn up.
Gent Wevelgem On The Move
One change that was not met with such enthusiasm in some quarters was the change of date for Gent-Wevelgem. Back in April , we brought you the news that Gent Wevelgem organisers were seeking to move their race from the Wednesday after the Tour of Flanders, back to the Sunday prior to Belgium’s biggest one day race. The reasoning was to help create a Flemish Cycling Week, but the problem is that the Sunday prior to de Ronde van Vlaanderen is occupied by the Brabantse Pijl (with the E3 Prijs the day before).
At this week’s meeting, The Council approved the dates of the events in the UCI ProTour class for 2010 and included this change of date for Gent-Wevelgem, which will now take place on 28 March.
Of course, a change in dates will have a flow on effect with Sporza reporting that the Brabantse Pijl will move to the Wednesday before the Amstel Gold race and The Scheldeprijs will move from that day, to the Wednesday between the Tour of Flanders and Paris Roubaix, where Gent Wevelgem used to be. What is unknown at present is what will happen to the E3 Prijs. If that race moves to the Wednesday before De Ronde, it will have a clash with the normal dates of the Driedaagse van de Panne. E3 Prijs organiser, Bart Ottevaere, said that if the race was moved to a mid-week slot, it would probably not be run again.
Levi’s GranFondo Set To Be Huge
Levi Leipheimer's King Ridge GranFondo Presented by Road ID sold out six weeks in advance of the ride's first edition on October 3. Yet over and above being a smash hit that has drawn a who's who in US cycling among the field of 3500, Leipheimer's event could be pointing to a new direction for senior US pro riders.
In recent decades US riders and teams have risen to be among the finest in the world, and this nation is now a major international player in a truly global sport. Yet one of the lingering differences between the cycling cultures in Europe and the US is the relative lack of community involvement in the sport here. Communities in the USA have not traditionally got behind cycling events unless they are major stage races or have the name Armstrong attached.
That could be about to change. Leipheimer, a resident of Santa Rosa, California, has a groundbreaking plan that could generate in excess of $500,000 annually for his community, with a sizable chunk of that going as earmarked cash donations. This year the main causes are an animal/children’s charity, Forget Me Not Farm, and to a greater extent, the return of the Amgen Tour of California to Santa Rosa. Leipheimer has won the Tour of California outright three times.
Many would correctly say that fundraising bicycle rides are nothing new here. But thus far these worthy rides have always set out to benefit a cause, such as the Livestrong Challenge, which raises money to fight cancer at an international level. Levi's ride breaks from the past in that it is specifically intended to promote and raise funds for his local community and his region.
Leipheimer's event starts and finishes at Santa Rosa's Finley Community Center - a beautiful municipal recreation facility in Santa Rosa - and the ride is named after one of Levi's favorite training routes.
Leipheimer says. "The King Ridge GranFondo is the perfect way to show everyone what myself and many of the best cycling teams in the world know: Sonoma County is a cycling heaven."
A mass-participation ride, Levi Leipheimer's King Ridge Gran Fondo, has route choices ranging from 36 to 103 miles to showcase Sonoma cycling to a range of riders.
Leipheimer's ride has already started giving back. In early September, Levi used funds generated by the ride to donate $5000 to the Fort Ross Elementary School and fire department.
The most ardent cycling nations in Europe, such as Italy, Switzerland and Belgium, are full of famous cyclists with their own namesake gran fondo, or 'cyclosportive' as they are called in France. These mass-participation rides are produced with the intention of benefiting the communities to which particular riders have ties.
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