Professional Cycling

The Saunier Duval team member is aiming to best his 2007 achievement, he became 6th in the last giro and is feeling very confident for the coming season. Goal is to be in topshape around April and May, doing good in a few classics like Luik-Bastenaken-Luik and finishing off with the Giro. Maybe a little overconfident since his 6th place in the giro was due an escape in a flat tour and a marginally consolidated placement in the overall standings in the mountains. The last week of this years Giro is pretty though and I wonder if he can keep it up then.

His chances in the 1 day races may be better, but he’s still young so he’ll probably need a few more years before he can make his projections for the next season really come true

This year, the Giro will probably be dominated by some more experienced guy’s, I give Soler more chance in winning the Giro then Ricco, but thats speculating as well, especially since he wants to do good in Giro and Tour…..

Marianne Vos from the Netherlands surprised everybody on the world cup in Beijing to participate and to take home two world cup gold medals in Olympic events. And the reason she was there was because of the road event next year.. she wanted to tour the road course and see if the terrain suited her. Well, its clear that if it doesn’t work out on the road she has alternatives on the track in Beijing. for a report check this link.

In 2008 there will be a mountainous tour through Spain, there will be eight mountain stages, and only four of twenty one stages that are totally flat.

there is a Team event just as last year, the prologue will feature a team time trial of 7km.

The famous but controversial mountain Angliru is featuring in the stages again, its maximum ascend is 23 percent…. so a lot of riders will feel the mountain coming from miles away.

Longest stage is 224 km, from Barbasto to Andorra, this stage feature right after the first day of rest.

Favourite with this layout is Dennis Mentsjov, he’s won the Vuelta twice in the last 3 years and will be aiming for a third one next year.

Below a downhill vid of the decent of the Angliru, watch the guy filming miss the turn…..

And the pro’s in bad weather, Vuelta 1999:

The director of the pro-cycling team Rabobank has been fired, the team-leader Erik Breukink is under suspicion as well. During the research about how Rasmussen had managed to fool the entire team some stunning explanations were given.

Breukink new all the time about the real location and intent to mislead the UCI he even had a meeting with Rasmussen during the period he said Rasmussen was in Mexico, while the meeting was in Italy.. can you do the maths? More and more it seems obvious where and what Rasmussen was doing, he even published his blood-test results himself which showed unnatural results for a cyclist in such circumstances.

Below a picture of our fallen hero, doesn’t he look like a man who needs some…….?

Rasmussen has been fired directly after the Tour de France, team manager Theo de Rooij followed him shortly there after, The downfall in the Rabobank team hasn’t finished yet, Erik Breukink might be next. the stories are building up around him and he’s getting in a harder position each day. At the moment evidence that Breukink knew where Rasmussen was, and even worse, he knew that Rasmussen lied to the UCI to be able to get his own programme with the proved but not jet official drug Dynepo up and running. The tests from the tour showed that Rasmussen used this drug to enhance his blood to unreal levels. it Say’s that Breukink is in more deep than you’d want to be if you where wearing his shoes.

Its not clear that Breukink knew what Rasmussen was using, but you can figure out that he must have known that Rasmussen was using something that couldn’t be honest all the way. So to say that Breukink isn’t to blame is rather stretched, what hopefully will happen is that the Rabo-team decides its a good learning experience for Breukink and that he won’t make the same mistake again.

all in all you could say that the career in cycling for Michael Rasmussen is almost over, no way anybody can trust him after the stories he made up to prevent him to be blamed.

Even using his marriage to give excuses is rather pathetic if you ask me, I hope for his sake that it will stay with his cycling career and that it doesn’t end up in the deep regions of his private live. Even Rasmussen is still a cycling product from before the big doping problems and is probably influenced to much by the old cycling habits to know any better…

Tour schedule 2008, its been out a while, but with some comments from managing pro tour team directors it will be a more interesting story.

for the overview a small map of the rides.

Its a different tour compared to the last decades, there will be no prologue, 2 time trials that are not to big. It consists of 10 flat stages that will probably end in a mass sprint, 5 mountain stages, 4 medium mountain stages. of the total of 9 there will be 4 finishes on the mountain.

there will be 19 cols which will be climbed, see for details the blog about the European cols. riding the european cols.

One of the main Time trials is after 4 days of riding, so the first shift in the standings for the yellow jersey will be early in the course. There is one heavy stage in the Pyrenees, and a few undiscovered regions in the Alps, which will make the tour an interesting and invigorating sports-event.

Rabobank will aim at putting Mentsjov in the front, the stages are more suited to him than the last few years and show similarities with the Vuelta. since Mentsjov is one of the remaining grand Tour victors that hasn’t been caught on using doping, he’ll be one of the favourites for the yellow jersey.

Contador is switching teams with his manager Bruyneel, let’s hope that this transition to an European Pro tour team will have a positive effect on both of them and Bruyneel can continue his winning streak in tour victories. Especially the short individual time-trials will be in the advantage of Contador since his expertise is more in the mountains and the opportunities there will be plenty.

Management of the tour stripped the stages of the possibility to earn seconds in sprints in the hope that there will be more escapes and less politics in the stages. They want a more romantic tour, more heroes and less calculated victories.

Also since the breakup of the pro tour and the big three tours (Vuelta, Giro and Tour de france), its not an must to be a pro tour crew, so there are a lot more chances for teams to participate. only thing is they have to have bio passports, so the director of the Tour de france can choose the teams which stand for anti doping and thus give the smaller teams a chance to show themselves.

All in all a promising start, now lets hope the doping predicaments come to an end, and we’ll be cheering for a yellow jersey that wins the tour and gets to keep the victory without having to fight for it in court……