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Wednesday's EuroFile: Soler soars in Spain; Tondo wraps in Portugal
Juan Mauricio Soler (Barloworld) still had enough gas in the tank after winning the polka-dot jersey at the Tour de France to claw his way to victory in the grueling stage at the Lagunas de Neila on Wednesday and slip into the overall leader’s jersey at the Vuelta a Burgos.
The Colombian climber dropped the favorites on the final ramps of the always-decisive climbing stage in the five-day race in northern Spain.
He soloed across the line 17 seconds ahead of Carlos Castaño (Karpin-Galicia) and José Ángel Gómez Marchante (Saunier Duval-Prodir), with pre-race favorite Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d’Epargne) slinking through fifth at 42 seconds back.
Overnight leader Mikhail Ignatiev (Tinkoff) faded early on the beyond-category steeps as the lean mountain goats pushed the pace.
A lead group stayed together, but Valverde and Leonardo Piepoli (Saunier Duval-Prodir) faded when Soler put down a lethal acceleration with less than 2km to go to drop everyone. Castaño and Marchante gave chase in vain.
Thursday’s third stage is over relatively easy rolling terrain that’s well-suited for a sprint or a non-threatening breakaway.
Soler will have to test his time trialing skills in Friday’s 15km race against the clock if he hopes to become the first Colombian to win the Spanish race.
Tondo takes Portuguese tour
Second place in Wednesday’s 10th and final stage was enough for Spanish rider Xavier Tondo (LA-MSS) to jump from third to first and claim the overall title at the Tour of Portugal.
The Portuguese tour ended with an exciting final time trial duel on a rainy 38.8km course, with Hector Guerra (Liberty Seguros) claiming the stage and Danny Pate (Slipstream) rode a strong final time trial to seventh on the day at 1:36 off the pace.
Tondo, starting the day third overall, vaulted ahead of overnight leader Eladio Jiménez (Karpin-Galicia), a climbing specialist who couldn’t take enough time in Tuesday’s summit finish to hope to fend off his rivals in the time trial.
Tondo didn’t win any of the 10 stages, but he was most consistent to take the overall victory 56 seconds ahead of Portuguese rider Candido Barbosa (Liberty Seguros), who won four stages, but gave up too much terrain in the time trial to have a chance for final victory.
Voigt soars in Austria
German marauder Jens Voigt surprised everyone except insiders at Team CSC when he widened his hold on the leader’s jersey during Tuesday’s epic climbing stage at the Deutschland Tour.
The veteran German finished only 15 seconds behind Spanish stage-winner David Lopéz García (Caisse d’Epargne) up the 2670-meter hors categorie Rettenbachferner in the Austrian Alps and carries a 33-second lead to the Spaniard and 1:31 to more dangerous Levi Leipheimer in fifth with four days of racing left.
Some are asking how Voigt, renowned for his attacking style in transition stages and in the hillier classics, could drop climbers such as Damiano Cunego and Leipheimer on the highest mountain in the 2007 ProTour?
Voigt said it was a combination of circumstances that led to his remarkable performance.
“I was shit-scared. It was a huge climb. The last time we did it, I lost a lot of time, but that was the year I was sick in the Tour and I abandoned in the yellow jersey in 2005. (Yesterday) was not at all the same circumstances,” Voigt told VeloNews. “I rode the mountain like a time trial. I stayed on my limit, not looking too much to my left or right, I rode just as hard as I could before I would explode. With about 3km to go, I felt like I could go a little bit more. They told me these riders were getting dropped, I put as much as I could into the pedals.”
Voigt admitted he made a mistake in Monday’s fourth stage when he went too hard too soon on a steep Cat. 2 climb some 20km from the finish and nearly lost everything.
For Tuesday’s grueling 16km climb, he rode tactically more conservatively and tried to conserve his strength for the final kilometers near the summit.
“I made a mistake (Monday) when I tried to follow attacks from Gerolsteiner too early at the bottom of the climb. I went into the red and never recovered. I had to bluff my way through that because I was about to totally explode,” Voigt explained. “I told (CSC sport director) Kim (Andersen) that I wasn’t that bad, just that I made that mistake and I never had a chance to recover. He told me not to follow each acceleration (Tuesday). Discovery rode tempo today without even asking. They were thinking that Jens was struggling (Monday), today we are going to drop him.”
Andersen admitted he was surprised how well Voigt climbed, but said he told him to ride at his own pace and not worry about what the others were doing.
When Discovery Channel, confident it could spring 2005 German tour winner Leipheimer, set a steady tempo on the lower flanks of the steep climb, that only played into Voigt’s hands.
“When he’s in shape like this and motivated like he is in the leader’s jersey, we were thinking he could do it. He’s skinny and we saw he finished the Tour very strong,” Andersen said. “Discovery took responsibility and they pulled the whole way up, we just stayed on the wheel. The first part of the climb was a steady rhythm and every kilometer was passing without attacks. That was perfect for Jens. Then there were about 20 riders left. When García attacked, by then it was every man for himself.”
With three relatively flat stages and an individual time trial remaining, Voigt is now quietly confident he will win his second consecutive German tour title.
“If Levi has a time trial like he did at the Tour, then he’s still going to smoke me. I’d rather have a lead of 10 minutes than just one,” Voigt said. “We’re going get some help from the sprinter teams the next few days. I have nothing to do except to sit in, stay relaxed and hide.”
‘Kash’ caught with Vuelta cash
Andrey Kashechkin – the Astana rider popped for alleged homologous blood doping two weeks ago – was caught with tests financed by Vuelta a España organizers.
The Vuelta earmarked some 180,000 euros (about $250,000) to carry out an estimated 80 surprise anti-doping controls ahead of the season’s third grand tour. According to the Spanish sports daily AS, that money was used to track down and test Kashechkin.
Last year’s third-place Vuelta podium-man was located in the remote Turkish town of Belek (Astana team manager Marc Biver admitted he didn’t know where the Kazakh rider was) and he tested positive for banned blood transfusions, AS reported.
Vuelta officials have since told Astana that the team is no longer welcome at the September 1 start. Defending Vuelta champion Alexandre Vinokourov also tested positive for homologous blood doping during last month’s Tour de France.
Valverde not welcome in Stuttgart
Organizers of next month’s world road cycling championships in Stuttgart, Germany, are taking a hard-line against riders they consider with dubious pasts.
They already told German veteran Erik Zabel he’s not welcome for the road world’s, set for September 26-30 in the southern German town. Now organizers are wishing that Spain’s Alejandro Valverde would stay home, too.
“I’m against Valverde starting the world’s race, even in the absence of a pending legal case against him,” Susanne Eisenmann, president of the organizing committee, told local paper Stuttgarter Nachrichten.
Valverde has been under the gun for alleged links to the Operación Puerto doping ring. Although he’s never been officially named as a Puerto suspect, rumors continue to dog the Spanish rider that he was once a client of infamous Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes.
Valverde, meanwhile, is racing this week at the Vuelta a Burgos in northern Spain as part of his preparation for the Stuttgart world’s. A three-time’s world’s podium finisher, Valverde will be among the favorites for the elite men’s road race on September 30.
Eisenmann added that despite the problems at Astana, German rider Andreas Klöden should be allowed to start, because there have been no allegations raised against the German and he should, therefore, be presumed innocent.
Tinkoff relishes ‘road-trip’ Ignatiev win
Mikhail Ignatiev is living up to the tradition of cycling’s old-school head-bangers. The young Russian went on a half-dozen suicide attacks during the 2007 Giro d’Italia, but always came up short of victory despite the daring efforts.
Ignatiev finally scored a well deserved win after attacking a breakaway group in Tuesday’s opening stage at the Vuelta a Burgos in northern Spain to solo in for the stage and grab the race leader’s jersey.
Though he was short on sleep, Ignatiev gave a lively account of the win on the Tinkoff web page:
“To tell the truth, it was perhaps the most unexpected of all my victories. I’ll tell you why – it so happened that I had to go Spain from Italy by car, I drove all the way from Marseille into the bargain and went to bed well after two,” Ignatiev wrote. “So it came just natural that the sports director Orlando Maini told me not to aim too high and listen to my body. But the body said okay right after the start, so I made up my mind to give it a try.
“The breakaway didn’t form all of a sudden, it turned out to be a painstaking business, the pack almost sucked us in a couple of times. I had only one bottle in the cage and the commissaries held back the team cars as the gap was less than one minute – but in never grew big enough until finally the peloton let us go on the climb of the day – what a relief to have something to drink!
“Luckily enough, the weather was mild for this region and the time of year, there were some clouds above and some breeze to cool off. There were three of us Tinkoff riders in the leading pack, Steffen Weigold and Toto Commesso did quite a lot for my eventual success, they took powerful pulls whole I stayed in the wheels for long spans.
“We mapped it out as follows: I try to break away, if I fail, they contest mass sprint in what would be left of the front pack. I was fortunate to pick the right moment for the attack in the back wind when the speed was high, and I really felt that I was able to ride alone quicker than with a couple of them even if I had chance to relax for a couple of moments.
“They gave me three jerseys on the podium, so I was at a loss to tell which one was for the general classification: I also won the young rider’s one and the one for combined classification. Well, it could be a pleasure to dream of holding on to the overall leadership, but I’d rather be a realist and focus on yet another possible stage victory, the time-trail hold a special importance for me.”
Gonzalez loses license, fined
Ex-Vuelta a España champion Aitor González was fined 1080 euros and lost his driver’s license for one year and one day for driving under the influence of alcohol and cocaine, a Spanish judge ruled last week.
González, winner of the 2002 Vuelta, was busted at a routine traffic stop in his hometown of Alicante earlier this year. He was forced to give urine and blood samples after he was detained by police.
González was once hailed as a challenger to seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong, but left cycling after testing positive for steroids during the 2005 Vuelta.
According to police records, González gave breathalyzer results of 0.39-0.41 mg/l and revealed “external symptoms that influenced his capacity: smell of alcohol on his breath, contracted pupils, euphoria, comments and answers disrespectful and aggressive.”
González testified on August 7 that he drank two drinks but said he never took cocaine.
“I didn’t take cocaine on this day or ever in my life,” police documents quoted him as telling investigators.
