Friday’s EuroFile: Zabriskie on Tour bubble; ‘Man in black’ angry at UCI
- By Andrew Hood
- Published Jun. 22, 2007
Dave Zabriskie still doesn’t know if he’ll be racing next month’s Tour de France.
Fresh off notching his best-ever European result with fifth overall at the mountainous Dauphiné Libéré, the Team CSC rider said he won’t know his Tour fate until team manager Bjarne Riis finalizes the nine-rider selection after the Tour de Suisse concludes this weekend.
“He’s keeping me in the dark. I talked to him the day after the Dauphiné and he’s still waiting to make a decision,” Zabriskie told VeloNews. “I feel really good and I know I could handle it, but it’s up to him.”
The 28-year-old reached new heights last week when he climbed better than ever in the decisive mountain stages during the eight-day Dauphiné.
He was third in the 40.3km time trial at Anneyron behind two Astana riders and then hung tough with the best climbers up such epic cols as Mont Ventoux, Col de la Croix de Fer, Col du Télégraphe and Col de la Forclaz.
He’s hoping the breakthrough performance in the important Tour warm-up race will help secure him a ticket to what would be his third straight Tour start.
“In 2005, I knew for sure. Last year was getting a little iffy, but at the Dauphiné, it turned out okay,” he said, referring to two time trial wins in last year’s Dauphiné. “We had a big team meeting at Liège. There were nine guys with X’s next to their names. Mine had a question mark. I’m not sure what kind of (Tour) team he wants to take. You’d think he’d want the strongest team possible.”
Zabriskie – just one of five Americans to wear the maillot jaune after he won the opening time trial in the 2005 Tour – is training at his European home base in Girona, Spain, to maintain his fitness while he waits word from Riis.
Zabriskie will be part of Team CSC’s eight-man team for the Eidhoven time trial race next Tuesday in Holland.
Vinokourov blasts UCI insinuations
Tour de France favorite Alexandre Vinokourov blasted UCI officials for insinuating that Astana riders are trying to avoid anti-doping controls and said he would not be distracted before the July 7 start of the Tour in London.
The UCI earlier this week made suggestions that a half-dozen “suspect” riders were being targeted with increased anti-doping testing and dubbed a few of them as the “men in black” because they were riding in anonymous jerseys to avoid possible controls ahead of the Tour.
Many jumped to the conclusion that officials were referring to Astana riders Vinokourov and others who train along France’s Cote d’Azur without wearing their emblematic team jerseys. The Astana team issued a statement Thursday saying the team had “nothing to hide.”
In an interview published in the French sports daily L’Equipe, Vinokourov said he was angered by the implication.
“Stop the rumors! If I train in a black jersey it’s only on the Cote d’Azur, where I live, and it’s because I want to be avoided be recognized by cycling tourists,” an angry Vinokourov said. “It’s not ideal to train for the Tour when I have 20 riders on my wheel for hours at a time. I’m not the only one who does it. Bettini doesn’t train in his rainbow jersey.”
On Wednesday, UCI anti-doping manager Anne Gripper told AFP that it was tracking “six or seven” suspect riders ahead of the Tour and subjecting them to extra out-of-competition controls.
Vinokourov told L’Equipe he’s already been tested three times, once ahead of Fléche Wallone, another time while training in Tenerife in April and once again in early June in his home in Monaco.
“If there had been an anomaly, I’d be the first to know, but there’s been nothing from the UCI, no mail,” Vinokourov said. “They are trying to scare us a little, but I am calm. I have nothing to hide.”
Crédit Agricole ending sponsorship
French bank Crédit Agricole announced it will end its long-running title sponsorship at the end of the 2008 season. The announcement came Friday that it would not prolong beyond next season its sponsorship that began in 1998.
“Crédit Agricole has decided to refocus its sporting sponsorship,” Roger Legeay, manager of the French ProTour team, told AFP. “It’s normal for a cycling team to see its sponsorship end. Ten years is a vote of confidence for the results which we garnered and our line of conduct.”
Legeay said he is confident he will be able to find another sponsor to keep the program alive. Such riders as Thor Hushovd, Pietro Caucchioli, Nicolas Roche and Saul Raisin are among the team’s 28 riders.
The decision comes as the French ProTour teams are at a crossroads in terms of sponsorship.
Cofidis announced earlier this year it would be ending its long-running cycling sponsorship while Ag2r-Prévoyance continues through the end of 2009. Bouygues Telecom and Francaise des Jeux, the other two French ProTour teams, haven’t revealed the futures of their respective sponsorships.
Cordero defends Vuelta choices
Vuelta a España director Víctor Cordero defended the exclusion of Relax-GAM from the 2007 Vuelta because the team didn’t “respect the Code of Ethics.”
Vuelta officials overlooked relax-GAM and Fuerteventura in wild-card bids released this week while Karpin-Galicia and Andalucía-Caja Sur were awarded the important invitations among the Spanish continental teams.
“We asked the four Spanish team to respect the Code of Ethics. Karpin and Fuerteventura agreed and Relax did with a certain degree of confusion,” Cordero told the Spanish wire service EFE. “The situation with Andalucía is different because they don’t have any riders implicated in Operación Puerto.”
Relax-GAM has several riders on the Puerto list, including Paco Mancebo, Oscar Sevilla and Santi Pérez, while Fuerteventura includes several riders and staff from the former Kelme/Comunidad Valenciana team. José Ignacio Labarta, an ex-Comunidad sport director, was among five people arrested last year as part of the Puerto scandal.
Vuelta officials also overlooked Unibet.com, the beleaguered ProTour team that’s now been snubbed by all three of the season’s grand tours. Cordero qualified Astana as one of three invited teams among the Vuelta’s 21-team roster.
Relax-GAM officials told the Spanish sport daily MARCA that the snub will likely force the team to fold,
Rogge: Olympic status secure
Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, said cycling is not in danger of losing its Olympic status despite a string of high-profile doping scandals.
“As long as the UCI continues its fight against doping and gets results, the IOC will continue to organize cycling events in the Olympic Games,” Rogge said in an interview with Belgian TV.
Rogge also lauded the UCI’s recent initiative to require riders to sign a pledge to race clean in the upcoming Tour de France.
FILED UNDER: Road
Andrew Hood
Hood cut his journalistic teeth at Colorado dailies before the web boom opened the door to European cycling in the mid-1990s. Hood's covered every Tour since 1996 and has been VeloNews' European correspondent since 2002. He lives in Leon, Spain, when he's not chasing bike races.