Second Edition Cycling News, Wednesday, January 19, 2011

• Previous Edition
• Next Edition

Date published:

January 19, 2011, 15:00

• Frustration for Armstrong as questions arise

  

  Article published:

  January 19, 2011, 06:08

  By:

  Jane Aubrey

  Sports Illustrated allegations annoy seven-time Tour champ

  Lance Armstrong was not impressed when he was asked to respond to new allegations aired by Sports Illustrated at the beginning of stage two at the Tour Down Under this morning.

  When first asked about the report, the seven-time winner of the Tour de France quickly said, "I have nothing to say."

  When pressed on the detail in the investigative report by Selena Roberts and David Epstein, the result of work in which the pair "reviewed hundreds of pages of documents and interviewed dozens of sources in Europe, New Zealand and the U.S.," he repeated: "Like I said, I have nothing to say."

  Journalists surrounding Armstrong pursued the line of questioning asking the American if he had at least read the article which appeared online hours before the stage from Tailem Bend to Mannum on the Murray River in South Australia. To that he admitted, "I perused it... there's nothing there."

  The line of questioning moved on to what Armstrong and his RadioShack team were expecting from the day's stage before moving back to the damning report, at which point Armstrong's anger and frustration boiled to the surface.

  "Dude, are you that stupid?" Armstrong asked of the reporter concerned. "What part of I'm not commenting is not clear to you?"

  The journalist was then told by Armstrong that if he intended on continuing with his questioning then he should leave.

  A few minutes later and slightly calmer, Armstrong told the gathered media that he didn't "have anything to worry about on any level."

• Mayhem in Mannum - Three crashes in chaotic sprint

  

  Article published:

  January 19, 2011, 08:32

  By:

  Jane Aubrey

  McEwen suggests gravel to blame for 'sickening' crash

  Robbie McEwen's (RadioShack) prediction prior to the start of the Tour Down Under's second stage from Tailem Bend to Mannum proved correct.

  The Australian sprint veteran told Cyclingnews : "I think we're going to see a finish that's even more chaotic than yesterday."

  Around a dozen riders finished the stage with injuries ranging from broken bones to gravel rash over three separate incidents. Those left suffering included: Chris Sutton, Geraint Thomas (Team Sky), Mark Cavendish, Matthew Goss (HTC-Highroad), Cameron and Travis Meyer, Tyler Farrar (Garmin-Cervelo), Bernard Sulzberger (UniSA), Pieter Weening (Rabobank), David Tanner (Saxo Bank-Sungard) , and Simon Clarke (Astana).

  Team UniSA's Bernard Sulzberger became the first serious casualty of the race, taken to hospital with a broken right collarbone following a crash within 100 metres of the finish. He was taken to Royal Adelaide Hospital where he was operated on to have a plate inserted. It's been a rough few weeks for the 29-year-old who is one of the many riders caught up in the uncertainty over the future of Pegasus.

  The team's manager Dave Sanders said: "No one likes to lose a rider and especially Bernie, with the situation he's in, hopefully he was going to put his hand up later in the week and chase a result - it's not good at all."

  'Sickening' crash claims HTC speed men

  HTC-Highroad's Mark Cavendish looked to be in a bad way once he eventually made it back to the team bus after the race, with blood dripping down the side of his face and his kit ripped to shreds after his involvement in the first crash around.

  Shaking and struggling to swat away flies that seemed to have invaded the town of Tailem Bend, Cavendish sought refuge in the team bus and there he was properly treated by team doctor Helga Riepenhof. He was given two stitches in one of the cuts above his eye and the sprinter will be riding on.

  Teammate and now sitting second overall in the general classification, Matt Goss suggested the course was only as dangerous as the riders made it.

  "There was plenty of carnage I didn't even see it all I don't think," he said. "I got caught four kilometres to go and I think around the corner there was a crash and I went down but I managed to get back into the peloton before the finish."

  New general classification leader Robbie McEwen told reporters that Goss actually hit Cavendish's neck once his teammate hit the deck.

  "They went down after the corner - there was just so much gravel on the sides of the road and after that particular left-hander there was actually gravel in the middle of the road," he described. "Somebody hit it with a front wheel and just went arse-up, took everyone down... It looked sickening, it looked horrible."

  Battle scars worth it for Team Sky

  Chris Sutton was taken straight to the medical tent after he was involved in the same incident that claimed Cavendish and Goss.

  Hobbling with his father Gary and with a knee tightly bandaged he described what has been coined the 'mayhem in Mannum' to Cyclingnews.

  "It just all happened so quick," he recalled. "I went through on the corner and someone was underneath me and everyone ran into me."
  
  "I was sitting behind Hendy [Greg Henderson] so there was HTC on the left and then there was us and I think it was Vansoleil were on the right of us and then Garmin as well. Around that corner it just got so hectic and people just went everywhere.

  "We'd done some re-con and we knew what it was going be like that's why we were at the front to try and avoid crashes but it didn't help."

  Sutton received further medical treatment once he returned to the Adelaide Hilton, including six stitches in his wounded knee. His condition with be reassessed before the start line in Unley tomorrow.

  Geraint Thomas received six stitches in his left elbow after he crashed just short of the finish following his turn in the Team Sky lead-out train.

  Team Sky's head coach Shane Sutton was buoyant after the race, despite the injuries to his men.

  "We'll take 12 stitched for a stage win."

  Question marks over state of the course

  McEwen claimed loose gravel on the surface of the road leading into Mannum played a major role in today's carnage.

  "In the last five to eight kilometres there was just bloody gravel everywhere," he told reporters.

  Goss too suggested there was an issue with the road surface - "That was a little bit dangerous coming into the finish it [gravel] was just coming onto the road a little bit. It's hard to make sure every thing's spot on but if everyone's paying attention it's not too bad but everyone seemed a little bit crazy today."

  A clearly angry race director Mike Turtur was forced to go on the defensive but he was adamant there was not a problem and the pace of finish was instead to blame.

  "Let's get one thing straight, the gravel on that road that they saw, was caused by the team cars that stopped for the crash, spinning their wheels and taking off," he said.

  "We can't have a billiard-table finish for every circuit, we can't have a straight run, there has to be technical aspects of the course.

  "Having said that, it breaks my heart and makes my guts churn."
   

• Romain Feillu takes on top sprinters Down Under

  

  Article published:

  January 19, 2011, 09:31

  By:

  Jean-François Quénet

  Frenchman at World Tour level with Vacansoleil’s promotion

  Romain Feillu has started the 2011 season with a seventh and a fourth place at the first two stages of the Santos Tour Down Under. By doing so, he has confirmed the predictions of race director Mike Turtur, who had named the Frenchman when he listed the top sprinters lining up in South Australia this week.

  “I feel that my condition is pretty good but on both occasions I could have delivered a better result as I got caught in the wind and couldn’t move up as much as I wanted,” Feillu told Cyclingnews.

  It’s the Frenchman’s second visit to Australia in a matter of months, as he came tenth at the world championships in Geelong in October.

  “I became a father on November 26, so I’ve felt some fatigue and I probably haven’t trained exactly the same as in previous years,” he said. “But I’ve had a good training camp in Benidorm, Spain, and I’ve come to the first race with 3500 kilometres of cycling. The Australian sprinters have a bit more rhythm than us. To beat them here might have required hard sessions behind a scooter but I enjoy racing here because the crowd is friendly with everyone. People aren’t chauvinist like in France. They like all the athletes.”

  Feillu owes his presence in Australia to the promotion of his team Vacansoleil into the World Tour. He joined the Dutch outfit from the defunct Pro Continental team Agritubel after the 2009 season, during which he won the GP Fourmies after helping his brother Brice to win a mountain stage at the Tour de France. However, he ended up on a different programme in 2010 as Vacansoleil couldn’t secure a wildcard invitation to the Tour.

  “I missed riding the Tour de France, although it’s not my best period of the year, usually,” Feillu said. “This year, I want to finish it for the first time and win a stage for the first time. I think stage 1 finishing on top the Mont des Alouettes suits me well and it’s very close to Cholet where I rode with the yellow jersey three years ago.

  “My 2011 season will be divided into three parts: part 1 from the Tour Down Under to the GP Denain in April, part 2 from the Tour de Picardie to the Tour de France, and part 3 from either Châteauroux or GP Plouay to the Tour of Lombardy, where I want to have a go if I have the same condition as at the end of last year.”

  The 26-year-old said he also expects his brother to chase him down if he makes a breakaway and Brice is working for a sprinter (Daniele Bennati or Wouter Weylandt) from his Leopard Trek team. Romain remained faithful to Vacansoleil while Brice prematurely ended his two-year contract to join the Schlecks in the Luxemburg cycling project.

  
   

• Frenchman Krivtsov shines in Australia

  

  Article published:

  January 19, 2011, 10:00

  By:

  Jean-François Quénet

  Former Ukrainian to challenge new compatriots at French ITT championship

  For the first time in his career, 32-year-old Yuriy Krivtsov, who turned professional with Jean Delatour in 2002, has appeared on a start list as a Frenchman. “He was naturalized in May last year but only now we can put FRA on our entry forms,” said Ag2r-La Mondiale’s directeur sportif Laurent Biondi, who enjoyed following his pupil during stage 2 of the Santos Tour Down Under.

  Krivtsov was the first man to break away after the start in Tailem Bend. He was quickly joined by David Tanner (Saxo Bank-Sungard) and Mitchell Docker (Uni-SA), who contributed to a second significant escape in as many days and collected more time bonuses. The Australian therefore moved into fifth on GC, while a two-second bonus helped Krivtsov position himself in eleventh. Krivtsov followed Ag2r’s tactic of having someone take time up the road every day with the aim of making the top ten overall and scoring points for the world rankings.

  “I tried and it worked out,” Krivtsov told Cyclingnews after the finish. “We believe the accumulation of the time bonuses will decide the GC.”

  Krivtsov is known as a dedicated team player. That’s how he keeps a pro contract although he hasn’t won a race since the Ukrainian national time trial championship in 2004. He came second behind Vitali Popkov in the same competition last year, but that was his last participation in a national championship in his native country.

  “This is my thirteenth year racing in France,” said Krivtsov, who migrated to try his luck with an amateur club in Nantes in 1999. “My son was born in France six and half years ago and he goes to French school. For him I’ve chosen to become a Frenchman as well. With my wife, we’ve decided to stay in France after my cycling career.”

  Interestingly, the next French championship for individual time trial in Boulogne-sur-Mer might well be a duel between Krivtsov and former Hungarian Laszlo Bodrogi, who was naturalized a year earlier. He has already challenged France’s two current best time trial specialists Nicolas Vogondy and Sylvain Chavanel, ending up with a bronze medal in 2010. On previous occasions, both Krivtsov and Bodrogi have proven their ability to ride faster against the clock than any native French pro cyclist, providing they show up at the peak of their form.

  
   

• Wiggins calls for biological passport data to be made public

  

  Article published:

  January 19, 2011, 10:53

  By:

  Daniel Benson

  Sky rider discusses Armstrong and Landis

  Bradley Wiggins (Sky) believes that professional riders should publish their UCI biological passport data online in order to give the sport greater transparency.

  Wiggins finished fourth in the 2009 Tour de France and admits that the result encouraged him to post his passport data from the race in a bid to prove he raced clean.

  “I think it was the natural thing. Everyone thought I was on gear after that and I can’t blame people for that,” Wiggins told Cyclingnews from the Team Sky training camp earlier this week.

  “I would have thought the same thing about someone who had come from absolutely out of nowhere from the gruppetto and finished fourth on the Tour and JV [ed. former team boss, Jonathan Vaughters at Garmin] just said to me, ‘we did it with Christian Vande Velde last year, what do you think?’ I said, ‘let’s do it.’”

  Wiggins' values for the period February 16, 2008 to July 28, 2009 were made public on July 31, just days after the Tour, and roughly 18 months on he would like more riders to follow his example.

  “I think they should make these things public,” he said.

  “The whole blood passport should be on [the] internet, every rider in the peloton. I don’t see why it shouldn’t be. It’s got to that stage now where if there’s nothing to hide why aren’t they up there? You can pull up in any walk of life, company accounts, people’s tax and that’s public knowledge, so I don’t see why the blood passport shouldn’t be public knowledge. It will silence people or challenge certain things but I don’t see what harm it would do. It would give you credibility in the public’s eyes … but I don’t think everyone would agree to it, maybe for moral reasons or people thinking that it might be an invasion of privacy.”

  Another rider who published his passport data in light of his 2009 Tour de France result was Lance Armstrong. The American returned to competitive racing that year after a three year absence and finished a place ahead of Wiggins in the Tour GC.

  However, his data was put through far more scrutiny at the time and in an unrelated matter, the American is now facing a US FDA investigation into doping practices at the US Postal team.

  Wiggins is a firm believer that Armstrong is innocent until proven guilty, admitting that he is a fan of the seven-time Tour winner.

  “I’ve always been a bit of a fan of Lance and have sided on the side of innocent until proven guilty with him. There isn’t an athlete or a cyclist out there that isn’t more tested than he is, certainly since his comeback, he’s probably been the most tested cyclist in the pro peloton and you take that on face value and that he’s never failed a drugs test and until he does he’s clean. That’s how I’ve always had as a stance on Lance.”

  The contention that Armstrong is the most tested athlete now or in any of his years of competition has never been proven but the allegations levelled at him by former teammate Floyd Landis shocked the sport back in May, when they first surfaced.

  “All the other stuff that’s come on with Landis and things like that is one for the courts and whether the truth will ever come out is down to this investigation. I think time will tell with that. As it stands today, with the time I’ve raced with him – and I’ve never raced with him in his era of winning seven Tours – but in his comeback, he’s probably been the most tested athlete and never failed a drugs test.”

  Landis announced his retirement from the sport earlier this week after being unable to secure a team for the last year. Wiggins, it seems, is a firm believer on letting the judicial process do its work.

  “I think you have to question Landis’ credibility because he lied under oath before and the stories that you hear about him drinking and things like that and you know, [making] telephone calls to people I know, threatening them with things, you just think that the guy appears to not all be there. So when you see these kinds of claims in the press you have to question his credibility because it’s almost like it’s coming from a mad man, but at the same time maybe that’s all borne out of frustration and things.

  “You just never know but you just look at the way his life has gone over the last five years and you think there’s one person who it would have been so easy to have just admitted it when it happened in 2006, come clean if he did do it and he would have been back racing in a professional team making pretty good money. It’s quite sad how his life has gone away, just dwindled away and now there’s all these claims and counter claims and it’s quite a sad story for him.”

  
  Stay tuned to Cyclingnews over the coming days as we talk to Wiggins about the Tour de France, Sky and Alberto Contador.
   

• A summary of the Sports Illustrated Lance Armstrong investigation

  

  Article published:

  January 19, 2011, 11:29

  By:

  Cycling News

  The Case against Lance Armstrong

  Sports Illustrated has published its full investigation into Lance Armstrong on its website under the title of the ‘The Case against Lance Armstrong’.

  The article is over 5700 words long and includes new and old accusations against Armstrong from a wide range of sources, including details of the questioning of Armstrong’s long-standing teammate Yaroslav Popovych in Italy and further revelations by Floyd Landis and Stephen Swart.

  The article lifts the lid on Armstrong's relationship with Anti-doping expert Don Catlin and reports details of a letter exchange that reveals unusual testosterone-epitestosterone ratio test results found in three of Armstrong’s urine samples. The article also suggests Armstrong gained access to the experimental blood boosting drug HemAssist.

  Armstrong refused to answer questions about the accusations before the start of the second stage of the Tour Down Under, only saying: "I perused it... there's nothing there."

  Armstrong has yet to be formally involved in the FDA investigation but Selena Roberts, one of the two journalists who wrote the article has suggested in a video interview on ESPN.com that that could occur as soon as February.

  The key points of the SI investigation:

  The Sports Illustrated article claims that sources familiar with the FDA investigation have discovered that Armstrong had access to the blood boosting drug HemAssist during clinical trials in the USA. The drug trials were ended after several patients died but athletes apparently tried to buy HemAssist because it does not raise blood haematocrit and has a very short half life, making it almost impossible to detect.

  Armstrong’s lawyers claimed it was impossible for Armstrong to have access to the drug but Sports Illustrated suggested that stockpiles of the drug may have remained.

  Sports Illustrated claims that Italian police and customs officials discovered performance enhancing drugs when they searched Popovych's home, as well as texts and e-mails that link Armstrong to Dr Michele Ferrari as recently as 2009. Armstrong claimed he had cut all ties with Ferrari after the Italian doctor was found guilty of sporting fraud. Ferrari was later cleared due to the four-year statue of limitations rule of Italian law. Ferrari refused to respond to the accusations when contacted by Sports Illustrated.

  Perhaps the most significant section of the story regards Armstrong’s relationship with Professor Don Catlin, the former head of the US Anti-doping laboratory at UCLA. He has been a member of the IOC Medical Commission since 1988 and is also credited with identifying the THG designer drug made famous during the BALCO investigation.

  Catlin left UCLA in 2007 and created his own business with his son. In 2009 he agreed to run the internal testing programme at Armstrong’s Astana team. However the programme ended after five months due to problems over costs. Armstrong was only tested once.

  SI report that the US Anti-Doping lab tested Armstrong more than two dozen times between 1990 and 2000. In 1999 USA Cycling asked Catlin to supply results of testosterone tests. Catlin claimed that there was little chance of recovering five results from the early nineties but detailed three results that stand out: "a 9.0-to-1 ratio from a sample collected on June 23, 1993; a 7.6-to-1 from July 7, 1994; and a 6.5-to-1 from June 4, 1996.”

  Any ratio above 6.0-to-1 was considered abnormally high until 2005 and since then the ratio limit was lowered to 4.0-to-1. Floyd Landis tested positive for testosterone at the 2006 Tour de France with a report ratio of 11-1.

  Catlin told USA Cycling that he tried to confirm the two highest values with further testing but was unable to do so and declared they were negative. Catlin told SI that he did not know the samples belonged to Armstrong but admitted that the three high testosterone ratios detailed in the letter as ‘very strange’.

  Armstrong has always claimed he has never taken performance-enhancing drugs and has never tested positive.

  Further revelations by Floyd Landis’ also appear in the article.

  Sports Illustrated report an incident when Landis flew with Armstrong to Switzerland on a private jet. He claims customs officers searched their bags and that “Lance had a bag of drugs and s…” Landis claims a member of Armstrong’s contingent spoke to the officers and persuaded them the drugs were vitamins.

  Armstrong’s lawyers denied the event ever happened.

  SI also give details of the dispute over claims that Armstrong admitted taking performance enhancing drugs to doctors treating him for cancer. Betsy and Frankie Andreu testified under oath that they heard Armstrong say he took EPO, growth hormone, cortisone, steroids and testosterone. Oakley representative Stephanie McIlvain has always denied hearing Armstrong admit to taking drugs.

  SI points out that during the 2005 SCA arbitration case -a dispute between Armstrong and SCA Promotions about payment of a £5 million Tour de France bonus after allegations of doping, that McIlvain's deposition lasted 103 minutes but claim her appearance at the Federal inquiry last seven hours.

  Many of Armstrong's former teammates have also been questioned in front of a grand jury as part of the FDA investigation. Most have publicly denied they ever saw Armstrong take drugs but New Zealand’s Stephen Swart has spoken out.

  Swart says he took EPO but admits he never saw Armstrong or another teammate from the Motorola team take the drug. However he claims that during internal blood testing on July 17, 1995, “Lance was at 54 or 56 (blood haematocrit percentage).” In 2001 the UCI introduced a limit of 50%, while an average male value is around 43%.

  Armstrong's spokesman Mark Fabiani told Cyclingnews, "The story is filled with old news, recycling the same old tired lies from the same old tired liars".

  A spokesman from Sports Illustrated told Cyclingnews, "We stand by the reporting in the story."
   

• Riis planning for season with Contador

  

  Article published:

  January 19, 2011, 12:43

  By:

  Cycling News

  Saxo Bank team manager defends Schleck Vuelta expulsion

  Saxo Bank-Sungard team manager Bjarne Riis reiterated his confidence in Alberto Contador and said that he is planning his season under the assumption that Contador will be able to race as normal.

  “We’re worried and we’re trying to support Contador as much as we can,” Riis told Reuters. “There’s an ongoing procedure and we respect it. In any case, we won’t have any influence on the decision that will be taken."

  “I know that his lawyers have put together a very good defence. Clenbuterol has been found in his urine but the dose was insignificant. He didn’t win the Tour de France because of that. It’s strange that the substance appeared only once."

  Riis added that he is continuing to plan Contador’s season as if the Spaniard is going to start the new season normally with the Tour of Murcia in March. He also denied speculation that Contador might attempt to take part in all three Grand Tours and admitted that his Saxo Bank team had been weakened by the loss of so many riders and staff. Eight of his former riders have joined the new Leopard Trek team.

  “It’s something I’d like to try with Alberto but not this year because I don’t have the team to back him,” Riis said. “17 to 20 people, I don’t remember exactly, have left Saxo Bank. Our team will probably not be as strong as before but it remains a good team. Nick Nuyens is a good rider for the classics. Richie Porte has an enormous potential and he’ll become a Tour de France contender in two or three years.”

  The Dane has also had to recompose his technical staff after Kim Andersen’s departure to Leopard Trek. Riis was full of praise in the interview for his current team management. “Bradley McGee is the best directeur sportif in the world,” Riis stated. “His new assistant Philippe Mauduit who comes from Cervélo is of high quality too. I personally feel more relaxed than last year. 2010 was very complicated…”

  One of those complications was his expulsion of Andy Schleck from the Vuelta a España after he broke internal team rules on alcohol consumption. Riis insisted that Schleck’s pending defection to Leopard Trek did not influence his decision to send the Luxembourger home.

  “There are rules that cannot be broken,” Riis said. “Furthermore, as I paid him until the end of the year, he could have ridden until the end of the year, like the others who I knew were leaving.”
   

• Carla Swart killed in South Africa

  

  Article published:

  January 19, 2011, 14:08

  By:

  Cycling News

  Updated: HTC-Highroad rider hit by a truck during training

  HTC-Highroad rider Carla Swart died after being hit by a truck while training in South Africa. The 23-year-old Swart was riding on the road to Marquard in the central Freestate province of South Africa when a truck slammed into her.

  Barry Austin, Cycling South Africa’s team manager who saw the accident happen, said Swart turned around right in front of the oncoming truck moments after she had lost her cycling computer.

  “I could see how the driver slammed on his brakes. He even swerved to the right so as to avoid smashing into Swart, but it was to no avail. The truck hit Swart full on, flinging her into the air,” Austin said.

  Swart died before she reached the hospital.

  According to Austin, Swart was doing time trialing exercises when the accident happened.

  Swart was born in Graaff-Reinet, South Africa but moved to the USA with her family when she was 15. She represented South Africa in the 2010 Commonwealth Games, finishing eighth in the road race as the top South African finisher.

  She was a multi-discipline US collegiate champion in 2008 and finished eighth in the 2010 Ronde Van Drenthe World Cup. She also won the best young rider's award in the Tour de L'Aude stage race and finished 10th in the women's race at the road world championship in Australia.

  HTC-Highroad posted a moving message on the team's website: "Carla, in such a short time you became part of our family and touched us all with your vibrant personality and your constant smile. You infected us with your zest for life and we will forever have you in our hearts. Our wishes go out to Carla's family and loved ones."

  Deon Swart, the father of Carla, wrote the following on her facebook wall. "Carla's dad here. We all know Carla has claimed here place in Heaven. She was in an cycling accident today in South Africa while training. Thanks to everyone that was so involved in her life and career. RIP Carla. What more can I say at this stage."

  Cyclingnews extends its condolences to her family, friends and teammates.