(Apologies to anyone who doesn't want to hear about the Tour of California, since I have about 8 paragraphs of cycling ahead...)
A huge week in cycling ahead, as perhaps the greatest cycling field ever in North America is assembling in Northern California for tomorrow's start to the 2009 Amgen Tour of California. It's almost a Tour de France-lite field, with classics riders like George Hincapie, Jens Voigt, Stuart O'Grady and Robert Gesink, sprinters like Thor Hushovd, Oscar Friere, Tom Boonen, and Mark Cavendish, and time trialists like Fabian Cancellara all in the field. This of course doesn't count the HUGE names like Ivan Basso, Tyler Hamilton, Floyd Landis, Carlos Sastre, Christian Vande Velde, the Schleck boys, and of course the two big names of Team Astana, Lance Armstrong and defending Tour of California champion Levi Leipheimer. What a ridiculous accumulation of talent. The entire start list is listed here.7 teams of 8 riders.
You might notice that there is a huge number of Americans (>40) because a large number of second-tier American professional teams are invited. These guys are often very visible in the breaks since their riders are trying to attract future contracts with the ProTour teams that are also in the race. Last year, one such rider was Canadian Dominique Rollin, who was on Toyota-United's team. He broke away from a group in the pouring rain during stage 4 last year, and held off a chasing group to win Stage 4. He is now racing on the Cervelo TestTeam riding alongside Carlos Sastre. Here is a 10 minute recap of last year's stage if you want to watch. A great ride...anytime a breakaway stays away is pretty exciting...
Rollin has plenty of Canadian brothers in the race this year. Despite Bikey favorite Ryder Hesjedal not being in the race (he's training in Europe for some upcoming races in Italy), Michael Barry (Team Columbia),Svein Tuft (Garmin), Cameron Evans (Ouch), Will Routley (Jelly Belly), and Charles Dionne (Fly V Australia) make it 6 Canadians competing against the big boys. Rollin is probably the best chance to make race headlines, as he seems to race well in week-long events, as he won the sprinters jersey at last year's Tour of California (and finished in the Top 10 in 5 stages), won the King of Mountain jersey at Tour of Missouri, and finished overall top 10 at the Tour de Georgia. He's still young at age 26, and has a good future ahead of him.
Svein Tuft is another Canadian who first made international cycling headlines in 2008 when he finished 7th overall at the Beijing Time Trial and then won a silver medal at the 2008 World Cycling Championships. But his results pale in comparison to his life story. The NY Times wrote a great article this week about his story, which includes dropping out of high school, traveled across the country by jumping railroad cars, cycling to Alaska without warm clothes, etc. He's the Boxcar Willie of the pro peloton, and at age 31, likely headed to the Tour de France for the first time.
Okay, so who wins the Tour of California? It's probably Levi's tour to lose. He's won the race in 2007 and 2008 (Floyd Landis won in 2006, which is the same year he won the Tour - until he got DQ'd for a drug positive) and it seems like Team Astana is going to try and get Levi the three-peat. Lance says he is committed to getting Levi the victory. Lance will undoubtedly try and make some headlines by trying to win the time trial or get a stage win to justify the media attention. The race winner will probably come from a small group of candidates who can time trial well and still get over the mountains in the lead group.
Lance also made headlines this week when his much-discussed personal independant drug-testing program was stopped. When Lance announced his comeback, he announced that he would hire Don Catlin (who runs internal testing programs for Team Garmin and Team Columbia) to run a transparent individual testing program. But this week the partnership ended, blaming it on financial and administrative issues. Lots of people were critical since Catlin's involvement never produced the "posted on the web" transparency that they promised. However, Lance quickly hired Dr Rasmus Damsgaard, who has also done team testing for Saxo Bank and Team Astana. Lance will be tested for a huge list of compounds, including EPO, CERA, HGH, steroids, masking agents, blood transfusions, stimulants, and the entire list of WADA banned substances. It's a pretty good start, and Lance's website quickly published his test results from October to February. So far it looks good. Congrats Lance...
The good thing about the independant testing that many cycling teams currently use is that they can monitor their racers and perhaps prevent dirty cyclists from compromising the team's reputation at big races (see Astana in 2006 or Rabobank in 2007 or Saunier Duval in 2008). However, the NY Times this week suggests the flip side and criticize internal testing for not being transparent. It opens the suggestion that team's could cover up positive tests since they are not required to report them. Poor cycling can never win...
I have lots more doping news and allegations to report on (maybe i need a DopeyMonday blog too?) but will save them for next week...I did want to update a couple of other stories...
The NYRR Empire State Building Run-Up was held last week and the favorites did win again - but the women's champion Suzy Walsham had some obstacles to overcome since she fell at the start and got stepped on by several other competitors in the race to get into the stairwell. But she moved steadily through the field and managed to win her 3rd race in a row by 13 seconds. The Australian was joined by German Thomas Dold who won his fourth in a row in the men's race. Video highlights below...
Big news in sporting goods, where Chinese company Li Ning appears to be going global. They signed Yelena Isinbayeva to a $7.5 million sponsorship deal to wear Li Ning clothing for the next 5 years. Normally, the vast majority of big names in Athletics are sponsored by Nike or Adidas, with smaller players like Puma, Reebok, and Adidas sponsoring smaller numbers of athletes. This is the biggest contract ever for a female track and field athlete and is more money than even Usain Bolt makes from Puma. Wow. Congrats to her and get ready for Li Ning to become a bigger name on the global market. I wonder if they'll sign Liu Xiang since his value is way down after his injury-plagued 2008 season?
Two fast people to report on...the London Olympics are still 42 months away, but 19-year-old Steph Twell is already stoking british hopes. She's a long distance runner who is gunning for gold in the 1500m, but her background has her being compared to Paula Radcliffe. Actually, Twell's numbers in the middle distances are better than Paula's at the same age, but Twell probably will be a 1500m and 5000m runner for the foreseeable future. But she is fast (Junior World Champion 2008) and with UK Athletics and Nike pushing her forward, she will make a lot of headlines in the next 3 years...
Another great running story about a Japanese marathoner who only started running when he was 36. 60-year-old Yoshihisa Hosaka set a world record for runners over 60 when he ran 2:36:30 at an elite marathon in Japan. It would have been neat to see the race since he was encouraged by other "elite-level" runners who ran around him to try and help him break the previous record (which was just above 2:38). Hosaka says he ran nearly 30 km every day to try and prepare for the world record attempt. To put his run in perspective, the top Canadian 60+ runner has run 3:03 and 3:09 the last two years.
Okay, thats it for now...lots of daily updates next week from California. See you then....
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