Sastre’s Tour
- By Andrew Hood
- Published Jul. 21, 2009
- Updated Jul. 21, 2009 at 5:56 PM UTC
Carlos Sastre isn’t a happy camper at the 2009 Tour de France.
The defending champion’s frustration poured out in a scathing press conference on Monday’s rest day when he accused the media of not giving him his due respect.
Things started off badly, when the first question was innocent enough, querying whether Sastre was happy with how his Tour was going so far.
“I haven’t received the respect I deserve from the media or from the Tour,” Sastre said. “The very first question I was asked by someone was, ‘What do you think of Armstrong and Contador?’ I’ve never had any doubt about where I belong. The other day I admitted it was going to be difficult to win the Tour. No one’s treated me the way I should have been. I haven’t lost my motivation; I haven’t thrown in the towel. I am just realistic. Since Monaco, I have felt … not a plot, but a situation that no one wanted me to win the Tour, above all from the part of some riders.”
The Cervélo climber then railed against the assembled Spanish media, accusing them of focusing completely on the showdown between Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador at the expense of everyone else in the peloton.
Sastre’s angst revealed a growing jealousy of the rising profile of Contador within Spain.
“You created a polemic between two riders, leaving the rest aside. Now you have what you wanted,” Sastre said. “I am in the shadows. The Tour wants a fight between two, with the rest on the sidelines. If the race is boring, it’s because what’s been cooked up around it. It’s not an open race.”
Journalists soon gave back, and tensions rose when one Spanish reporter said that the media has been focusing on the race, saying, “Contador and Armstrong are first and second, so we can’t be too wrong. All we’re not reporting is that you’re 11th and you have almost no chance of winning.”
The outburst was odd coming from Sastre, who typically displays a tranquilo exterior and generally gets along with the media, knowing most cycling hacks on a first-name basis.
The press conference bordered on the absurd when English-speaking journalists, who had no clue what Sastre and the Spanish journalists were babbling on about, finally asked a question. After one heated, 20-minute exchange in Spanish, a foreign journalist finally asked a question in English, “Carlos, what do you think about Contador?”
Sastre just sighed and repeated himself in English.
The press conference lasted 45 minutes, and neither side left satisfied.
Later, some fans waiting in the hotel lobby asked Sastre for a photograph, and he quickly obliged. They asked a nearby journalist, waiting to attend a press conference with Cadel Evans, to snap a picture.
The journalist agreed and said, “Smile, Alberto!”
To his credit, Sastre chuckled and asked the journalist where he was from.
“Australia!” the journalist replied, holding up his press credential.
Carlos had the last laugh before walking away, saying: “Austria?”
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FILED UNDER: News / Road / Tour de France TAGS: Tour de France
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.