The Cycliste Moderne, September 24, 2006

2006 World Championships Recap

This weekend marked the crowning of this year’s world champions for men, women and under 23 riders in the road race and time trial. With a hilly course in Salzburg, Austria, the road race was expected to favor an all around strong rider as opposed to a sprinter. However, recent hilly worlds’ courses, like Lisbon, Portugal in 2001, which saw Oscar Freire win his second world championship jersey, have not been sufficiently difficult to create a significant selection and keeping the race from resulting in a field sprint. Hamilton, Ontario in 2003 did have enough climbing to break up the race, although the winner Igor Astarloa, who has won a fair number of technical races, was kind of a fluke.

Paolo Bettini of Italy proved a deserving winner as the race ended with a field sprint. Bettini, Il Grillo or the “Cricket,” is a deserving winner. He is a fairly quick sprinter but he also is an accomplished all around rider who has shown his ability to stay with the toughest men in the peleton. He has won most of the big one day races that have any climbing to them. He has won the World Cup in the past. He is the reigning Olympic gold medalist. He probably would have won in Lisbon in 2001 had a teammate not chased him down. Bettini has never whined about his bad luck at Worlds or criticized his team. Bettini is a deserving winner.

However, the course for the World Championships needs to be revisited. It has been ten years since there was a truly climber focused world course. Although this year was expected to shake things up more than in recent years, that did not happen. Bettini is a deserving winner and would have likely been able to win this year on a flat course or a mountainous course. However, every four to five years, there ought to be a World’s course like Liege-Bastogne-Liege that truly tests the peleton and does not end with 30 riders in the main group. Additionally, the course has to be difficult enough that it does not result in a one-hit wonder like Oskar Camenzind in Valkenburg, Netherlands in 1998 or Romans Vainsteins in Plouay, France in 2000 or Igor Astarloa in Hamilton.

The Americans had an excellent Worlds. Americans brought home gold, silver and bronze, all in the time trial. Kristin Armstrong won the women’s time trial with a dominant performance. California physician Christine Thorburn finished a strong third. Dave Zabriskie finished second to his CSC teammate, Swiss time trial champion and general all around rider Fabian Cancellara, who blew the field away. Idaho now has its own world champion.

The American Press is Stupid

Many mainstream press websites picked up a wire service story about significant turnover after the season on Discovery Channel. Most reports focused on the fact that eleven riders who had ridden with Lance Armstrong would be leaving at the end of the season. There seemed to be some insinuation that recent doping allegations or personality conflicts were the cause of the departures. Additional discussion occurred regarding the fact that George Hincapie was the only rider who had ridden with Armstrong in the Tour de France who was remaining with the team.

What was largely unreported was that eleven riders represented only about a third of the total riders on the team and that one departure was caused by the retirement of Slava Ekimov, who was moving into team management, and Jose Azevedo’s decision to ride domestically at home in Portugal so he could spend more time with his family. Moreover, the media seemed to have no knowledge of the fact that most riders are only on one or two year contracts with contracts of three years or longer being incredibly rare in cycling thus, each team has the potential of losing one third to half its riders at the end of any season.

To the contrary, the cycling press focused on who Discovery had signed for next season, including Levi Leipheimer who is returning to the team after three seasons at Rabobank and two at Gerolsteiner, the signing of the first Chinese national ever to sign with a top professional team, Fuyu Li, who had become the first Chinese rider to win a UCI rated race when he won the Tour of Thailand. Also joining Discovery are Uros Murn, a Slovenian rider currently with Phonak, Olympic medalist Sergio Paulinho of Portugal, currently with Astana, and Tomas Vaitkus, AG2R’s Lithuanian sprinter. As a ProTour team, Discovery will have approximately 30 riders, so a change of eleven is not that significant of turnover in the grand scheme of pro cycling.

Discovery continues to demonstrate its commitment to having a roster that is diverse and international, just like the network. Next season, the team will continue to have a strong international flavor with riders from at least 12 countries under contract. The team will continue to have a strong Belgian and American flavor reflecting its management. So contrary to what some think, Discovery, although an American team, does not view itself as the American national team, but rather a team that expands the network’s branding internationally.