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Posts Tagged ‘giro d italia’

The Standard: Bauer set sights on Europe

Steve Bauer has created Canada’s first major home-grown elite team (not counting the now-defunct Cervélo TestTeam) and promises to enter some top European races in 2011 with his SpiderTech squad. Bauer said of the team’s recent Pro Continental status: “Division 2 gives you the opportunity to ride any top professional race in the world, including the big-name races like the Giro d’Italia, the Tour de France and all the World Tour races, subject to invitation. We’ll certainly get some great races.”

Reuters: Year-end story: Contador, Armstrong under gun

In a year-end wrap-up story of 2010, Reuters takes a look at the trials and tribulations of Alberto Contador and Lance Armstrong. Caisse d’Epargne PR man Francis Lafargue is quoted: “With cycling’s degraded image because of doping and the financial crisis, it’s getting more and more difficult. The future is very uncertain.”

ABC: Double life of high-roller sport doctors

The Spanish daily ABC takes a look at the high-rolling sport doctors in a Sunday feature, with an in-depth portrait of the infamous Eufemiano Fuentes, back in the headlines again in the latest doping scandal in Spain, this time involving athletics. José Carlos Carabias writes: “He built an empire in the shadows. He not only advised riders of a team under contract, but extended his tentacles to rivals. He brought his ‘preparations’ to anyone who conformed to his rates (about 100,000 euros per year). This never raised an ethical dilemma, sporting or otherwise.”

Riis Cycling: Sørensen aims higher in 2011

Chris-Anker Sørensen hopes for an even better season in 2011 as the Danish climber, a winner of a stage at the 2010 Giro d’Italia, explains on the Saxo Bank team web site: “I’m basically looking forward to another season with this incredible team and I hope to be able to do the Ardennes classics and the Tour de France but the competition to be in the line-up has not become easier and I’m not guaranteed to play a part in France in July. In the autumn, I would like to repeat last year’s victory in Japan Cup and to be a part of the line-up for the Italian autumn classics.”

Must Reads is a new regular feature on VeloNews.com.

Next year should be a good season for fans who like to watch others suffer on a bike.

The Angrilu made its last appearance at the end of Stage 13 in the `08 Vuelta.

With the Tour de France bringing back Alpe d’Huez and a summit finish atop the Galibier and the Giro d’Italia slated to have seven mountaintop finishes, the Vuelta a España doesn’t want to be overshadowed. The Spanish tour will likely see a return of the gruesome Angliru climb in next year’s edition.

That’s according to reports in the Nuevo España daily in Spain’s Asturias region, which says that the popular summit finish in the Cantabrian mountains is likely to be one of two stages in the mountainous territory along Spain’s northern coast.

Vuelta organizer Javier Guillén has met with local officials to hammer out the details. The 2011 Vuelta route will be unveiled during a ceremony next month in Alicante, with the 76th edition of the Vuelta starting August 27 in Benidorm and ending September 18 in Madrid.

The Angliru climb has quickly become the Vuelta’s climb of reference since its introduction in 1999, when the inaugural stage was won by now-deceased Spanish climber José Maria Jiménez. Gilberto Simoni won in 2000 and Roberto Heras won in 2002. The race didn’t return to the narrow, torturous climb until 2008, when Alberto Contador won the stage en route to claiming the overall title.

The climb is one of the steepest in Europe, with an average grade of 10 percent over 12.5km of very narrow asphalt. The steepest ramps are near 24 percent at a section called the “la cueña les cabres.”

Guillén said he would like to see the Angliru and the Vuelta’s new marquee climb at Bola del Mundo rotate into the race profile every two to three years.

Spain’s main association of beef cattle producers on Monday called for an investigation into claims by Alberto Contador that contaminated meat was behind his positive doping test during the Tour de France.

The association said in a statement it had asked public prosecutors to open “a probe to clarify the possible truthfulness of the facts told by Alberto Contador.”

It added: “Given that the cyclist has not made a formal complaint against public institutions — the only way to trigger an official investigation that would definitively clear up this affair once and for all — the association has decided to put the case in the hands of public prosecutor.”

Contador emerged from this year’s Tour de France with a third yellow jersey to add to his collection from 2007 and 2009, bolstering his image as stage racing’s man of the moment. Contador also won the Vuelta a España and Giro d’Italia in 2008.

In September, however, the UCI provisionally suspended the 27-year-old after trace amounts of clenbuterol, a banned weight loss/muscle-building drug also used to fatten cattle, were found in a urine sample taken on the three-week epic.

Contador has argued he unknowingly ingested the clenbuterol from beef brought from Spain to France during the second rest day of the Tour, just four days before he won his third title on July 25.

The European Union banned clenbuterol in 1996 but it is still administered illicitly by some ranchers.

Last week Spanish newspaper El Pais reported that experts from the World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) visited the butcher’s shop in northern Spain where the meat Contador ate was purchased and the slaughterhouse that supplies it, and found no evidence of clenbuterol in any of its products.

The Spanish cycling federation (RFEC) is considering whether to sanction the rider. Contador has threatened to quit the sport if he is suspended for two years.

The former Astana rider signed a two-year contract with Saxo Bank in August.

Now that Ivan Basso has returned from his doping-ban purgatory following his hard-fought victory in the Giro d’Italia in May, he has some unfinished business with the Tour de France.

Basso returned to form at this year's Giro.

Basso, who turns 33 later this month, knows that he probably has one more good shot at trying to win the Tour. And with a climber-friendly route on tap for 2011, the Italian knows that he will have a unique opportunity come July.

“I think it’s a beautiful Tour route, one that could perfect for my abilities,” Basso said. “The stages in the Pyrenees and the Alps equally challenging, and with the less number of time trials, that only makes it better for me.”

After winning the Giro this year in an emotional return to the top, he will be hard-pressed to decide between defending his Giro crown on what will be an equally spectacular Giro course, presented last month that features no less than seven mountain-top finishes, or focusing solely on preparing for a run for the yellow jersey in the Tour.

That might mean skipping the Giro and making the Tour his season-long focus, with an option to race the Vuelta later in the season. Basso says his heart might compel him to come back for one last push for the Tour.

“It is clear that I have an affection for the Tour because it is the race that has launched me into the top levels of cycling but the Giro is the race I have won and it also gave the chance to make a comeback in the second part of my career, so for me it is very difficult to chose,” he said.

The presence of Vincenzo Nibali, who rode to third in support of Basso in May and then won the Vuelta a Espana in September, could make that decision easier.

Nibali could get tapped to lead the team for the Giro, taking the pressure off Basso so he can ramp up for the Tour. Liquigas brass have suggested that’s a real possibility, though no final decision has been made.

“I think there are two important aspects, one is what I desire and also the desires and dreams of Vincenzo and also the team, what our directors decide,” Basso continued. “So it will be necessary that we all look at each other in the eyes, since there is a very good relationship, the new Liquigas of the coming year has decided to invest a lot (in Nibali) so it is necessary to decide with loyalty what is best for me, for him (Vincezo), and for the team.”

Basso admits he craves to return to the Tour and enjoy the same success he did before his ban for his involvement with Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes, the key figure in Operación Puerto. Basso was third in 2004 and second in 2005, with Lance Armstrong pegging him as the man most likely to succeed him as Tour champion. Of course, Basso and several other contenders were ejected from the Tour before it even began in 2006 and the race was eventually won by Óscar Pereiro, but only after that year’s apparent winner lost his title to a doping positive. Basso insists his dalliance with doping  - or, as he continues to insist, the intent to dope – is far behind him and that he can return to the Tour riding clean.

His return to the Tour this year stuttered, perhaps from the hard effort that came with winning the Giro, and he finished a distant 32nd.

As a result, Basso says he has some unfinished business with the Tour.

“It’s a dream of any rider to wear the yellow jersey,” he concluded. “Maybe this year’s route is a good one for me. I would like to go back to the Tour in optimum condition to try to win it all. We will see.”