Velochimp: Astrochimp on Cycling

Hmm, maybe David Millar won’t be doing promos for SRAM’s chains anytime soon. Bonus points for getting some good distance on the bike. Bjarne Riis would be proud. After 4 plus hours in a breakaway having your chain snap just as you are about to make a sprint has got to be the most frustrating thing to happen. Add to that how Millar landed on his top tube and I would not be surprised to see him at least try and snap the bike in half before launching it. Better luck in the next stage.

(AFP/Damien Meyer)

Rain Sicilian roads made for a slick crash filled stage. The processional pace must have been a result of the crashes and recovery from the previous two stages. Passing from Catania to Messina there were many crashes highlighting the Giro coverage. Bradley McGee is the latest early exit from a nasty crash. That is two TT expert racers in two days.

Meanwhile Liquigas had a busy day controlling the tempo as team of race leader Franco Pellizotti and later on setting a high pace for the aspiring Sprint King Daniele Bennati. Benna

Vincenzo Nibali made a brief flyer to make the locals happy. The Sicilian cyclist riding on home roads got some cheers as he attacked 9 km from the finish. The Nibali attack which was more for show since he is a hometown kid, helped to setup the Liquigas train for Bennati.

The Liquigas train will never be mistaken for Petacchi’s Milram trains since attacks were able to get off the front and only a few Liquigas men were able to stay at the front. The front was a mix of Milram, High Road and other teams. Bennati was on Zabel’s wheels and other Milram riders. Going into the final 500 meters Bennati used the Milram train meant for Zabel to launch his final attack. Zabel was well placed but could not get around Bennati.

(AFP/Damien Meyer)

One of the exciting aspects of the Giro are these brutal climbing circuit finishes that bring out the small Italian sprinting/climbing types. The Davide Rebellin’s Danilo Diluca’s and Paolo Bettini type of racers that can power up brutally steep climbs and sprint to win in a small pack. The new kid on the block is brash and already has a viscious nickname of ‘Il Cobra’ Ricardi Ricco powered his way to a win in Agrigento in front of Davide Rebellin to take a well deserved win.

The day showed that Team LPR is serious in helping Danilo DiLuca defend his Maglia Rosa. LPR has some good racers including Paolo Savoldelli a former Giro winner himself. After Slipstream set the pace for most of the day with big man Magnus Backstedt in the front, LPR took over when the roads started getting steeper.

Slipstream meanwhile is suffering a double whammy mojo loss of the Maglia Rosa off of Christian Vande Velde’s back by a measly one second to Franco “porno Hair” Pellizotti. And David Zabriske could not use his mustache mojo to avoid a bad crash that hurt his vertebrae. The injury is not to serious, but will take some time to recover.

There is a local TV show called Brdige St. which follows the Regis and Kelly format. This is the second year in a row that we were able to get a segment on the show. Sam Sampere of the Onondaga Cycling Club did the on air honors showing some gear and a Trek Madone 6.9 worth $7500 from Syracuse Bicycle. These segments are light and easy, but hopefully get the info out about the Kids Race.

Photo (AP Photo/Marco Trovati)

The Giro is upon us once again. The funnest Grand Tour started today in Palermo, Sicily with a Team Time Trial. Twenty years after Andy Hampsten last wore the Maglia Rosa in Milan to win the 1988 Giro D’Italia witha young American 7-Eleven team Christian Vande Velde wears the Maglia at the start with a young American team.

Team Slipstream has been the team to beat in the Team Time Trials. They set an early fast time that teams such as the well oiled CSC and High Road failed to beat. The competition between CSC which was the home of Slipstream racers Christian Vande Velde and David Zabriske must have been intense as the CSC men came down and missed the time of Slipstream by only seconds. The typical hot and sunny Sicilian town presented an overcast day with some ocean breezes helping to slow down the return ride home. Several teams would clock in fast times to the half way point only to lose some time on the way back in.

Slipstream has been preparing for the TTT for over a week and made the first stage one of their main goals. Their win today was not for lack of trying as they already won the Team Time Trial at the Road America course in the Tour de Georgia just a couple of weeks ago. Recently they were training with the Giro team in Spain. So this win was not a big surprise for many who follow the team.

Team High Road had to help nurse their young revelation and Tour de Georgia winner Sistov who was having a hard time staying with the fast pace set by the team. As he dangled back other teammates were seen slowing down and encouragingS istov to stay in contact with the group. Clearly High Road has some bigger ambitions for Sistov during the Giro.

Next few stages go to the sprinters as Daniele Bennati can finally try to take the stage to himself as the next Italian sprint king as Alessandro Petacchi is home serving a one year suspension. Bennati is back into form and with a new team. He won the final stage of the Tour de Romandie. Bennati looks to square off against Mark Cavendish of Team High Road who also had a good result in Romandie with a prologue win. Robbie McEwen has been a regular winner and early abandoner of the Giro in recent years. The Bennati-Canvendish-McEwen battle should be fun to watch.

Alejandro Valverde now has two Liege-Bastonge-Liege wins in his pocket. The Spanish climbing-sprinting sensation looks to be on track to be a contender in the Tour once again. Though he admitted that his form was not as good as in 2006 when he took his last win at Liege, he was able to use his sprinting ability and smarts to beat Frank Schleck and David Rebellin.

The Schleck brothers seemed to have the race to themselves. When the decisive breaks happened on the new climb of Falcon’s Rock 20kms from the finish the number favored the brothers from Luxembourg. The group of five that formed contained two the CSC brothers, David Rebellin and two Caisse D’Epargne’s (Valverde and Rodriguez). Rebellin was odd man out until Rodriguez could no longer keep pace. Andy Schleck launched an attack that everyone knew was a setup for brother Frank. Trouble is that once Andy was caught by a very attentive Rebellin, Brother Frank could not shake off two tough sprinters Valverde and Rebellin. As the break of three cruised to the end it was only a matter of ceremony for Valverde to take the top spot.

Too bad for Schleck, he came so close to wins and was beat out by little guys who can sprint. Last week in Amstel, Cunego came out from behind to beat Schleck in somewhat of a surprise. While this time he could not use his numbers to shake off Valverde before the sprint.

Meanwhile it looks like Valverde wasn’t even going to try for the win.

“I knew if I could make it to the sprint, I’d have my best chance against these two,” Valverde said. “This win means a lot because the spring classics weren’t even a goal this year. I came here with a lot of motivation to race because my goals come later in the season with the Tour and the Olympics.” — velonews.com

So Valverde was not intending to win? But won anyway? This guys must be on drugs… queue the Operation Puerto questions…

Inevitably, Valverde was questioned about his alleged links to Operación Puerto, but he said he’s racing with a clear conscience. Some believe Valverde is linked to the Spanish doping scandal, but he’s never been officially implicated.

“My link to Puerto only comes from the media. No judge or evidence has ever suggested that I had anything to do with it,” said Valverde. “I’m not worried about the Italian authorities. If they want to question me when the Tour goes to Italy, let them. No problem.”
–velonews.com

BTW, did you hear that Basso signed with Liquigas? WTF?

The more things change the more they stay the same. I thought we were moving on from the Operation Puerto stories and in one quick swipe we get two OP related stories in the headlines. Cycling cannot catch a break. Even as the exciting Liege-Bastongne-Liege race wraps up a drug scandal free spring season it all comes back just in time for the start of a major Grand Tour.

For a race with the good ol’ boys in Georgia there is a wacky list of recent winners. This year the new guy with a funny name (yes, my name is Marcello and it is funny too) is Kanstantin Sivtsov. Not yet a household name, but that is what you said when Jani Brajkovic won last year. Now Jani is sitting home recovering from over-training while the young High Road racers takes the top prize. In second place is American Trent Lowe followed by Levi (Let me ride) Leipheimer.

The Tour de Georgia seems to be stuck in a conundrum. It has relatively unknown winners for the past two years and falls within the most exciting time of the Spring Classics. After the Tour of California received daily coverage from the USA’s main cycling coverage channel Versus, the Tour de Georgia will have to wait a week for a one hour highlight show. If you were not a die-hard velochimp reading fan or in Georgia you would not notice such a great event happening. With the epic Brasstown Bald climb and the cool new Team Time Trial at Road America the race has lots to capture the imagination.

Sistov seems like one of those guys who you will remember when he first won a stage at the Tour de Georgia. His all round ability could make him more well know when the Giro starts in a just a few weeks.
I still remember the Tour de Trump and a young Slava Ekimov with his powerful track-sprint challenging the big boys. Its these lower key races in America when you can see a talent emerge. Could we one day be witness to a tongue twisting Brajkovic vs Sivtsov duel on L’Alpe D’Huez for the Tour win? We could hope as Phil Ligget wrestles with those names and just decides to end his career mid-stage.

So here is to the good ol’ boys in Georgia who are clinging to their guns and church as racers from former Eastern Bloc countries with funny names ride in funny shorts make a name for themselves.

The Jittery Joes team rides through the Road America race course in a preview of the Team Time Trial.

This video is just about as timely as Versus’ Paris-Roubaix coverage. You would think the Queen of the Classics would deserve minimally same day coverage. Yet Versus goes to the Lance well again to cover the Boston Marathon live to focus on the star cyclist in his post career challenges.

Seeing the schedule last Sunday showed that Versus was stuck with covering Davis Cup tennis and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Couldn’t Versus at least show the coverage on Monday night or even dare we ask Live? Cycling.tv is simply too horrible to try and play. I like to use Firefox as my main browser and cycling.tv has a hard time dealing with that fact. Even if I use Internet Explorer 7 then I stil lget problems playing a video. Cycling.tv I love your concept, but can’t you make it work better somehow? Look at the video portions of the Tour de California Tour Tracker.

Damiano Cunego surprisingly beat Franck Schleck up the final Cauberg climb to win Amstel Gold. The revenge must be sweet after losing to Schleck at L’Alpe D’Huez in 2006. Cunego now looks to be the favorite going into Liege-Bastonge-Liege since it is better suited to his abilities. Lampre has also announced the Tour de France lineup backing up Damiano Cunego which in all likelyhood is a bid to win the race.

Lampre will also line up their sprinter Danilo Napolitano, Marco Marzano, Daniele Righi, Paolo Tiralongo and ‘Patxi’ Vila. “We clearly aim at winning the overall classification of the Tour de France with Cunego this year,” directeur sportif Bruno Vicino said on the start line of the 7th stage of the Presidential Tour of Turkey in Antalya. Two other Lampre riders have yet to be chosen.

cyclingnews.com

Cunego has been slowly getting his ducks lined up to tackle the Tour as a GC contender. Since his foray into France in 2006 where he impressed with a Best Young Rider jersey win and 11th place overall. The key factor in his BYR jersey win was his much improved Time Trialing ability. This is a skill that is key to winning in France. Now that it looks like Damiano and Lampre are putting in a serious bid for the yellow it will be interesting to see how he lines up against other favorites such as Alejandro Valverde and Cadel Evans.