I guess the fact that I didn't post on Sunday or Monday of last week would hint that our Canadian men and women did not come home from the ITU Worlds Finale with a great showing or two. This week, I will also touch on the transfer of a few key cyclists, and get you ready for the weekend ahead.
Okay, last week ITU Worlds began with a bang for Canada (Paula Findlay's bronze in the U23 race) but ended without much noise for our pro teams. In Saturday's male race, the 4 Canadian men all made frequent television appearances during the bike portion but not much on the run portion. Paul Tichelaar was a beast on the bike, as he made multiple attempts to escape from the 40+ man peloton on the bike leg. Ultimately, he ended the bike slightly ahead of the main field, closely grouped with 3 other strong cyclists, but couldn't hold off the sport's strong runners for the 10k run. He was actually still in 2nd place at 2.5k but faded down the stretch to finish in 20th. Simon Whitfield got into T2 in good shape, but an immediate acceleration by Alistair Brownlee, Jan Frodeno, Javier Gomez, and Maik Petzold left Whitfield in a 2nd chase pack. He ultimately finished in 8th place, 10 seconds behind the third place runner. But the real drama occurred at the front of the pack, where Brownlee-Gomez-Frodeno just kept surging, trying to break each other. It was actually riveting to watch, as Gomez tried again and again to drop Brownlee. On the final lap, Brownlee surged again and broke Gomez, giving him a 7 second victory. His final run time was 29:04 on a course that was measured exactly (supposedly). That's ridiculous...Gomez held on for second, and Frodeno was third after getting dropped about the 5k mark. A great race (or a least a great run) where 3rd place thru 20th place were decided by only 72 seconds. Congrats to Brownlee for a perfect ITU series (5 for 5 for the 21-year old!) and now everyone knows who the man to beat in 2010 will be. Brownlee also took home $85000 for his win in Australia and his overall World Series championship.
After the great race on the men's side, I was excited to see what the women's race would provide. It was a much closer Series, with Lisa Norden having a great chance to overtake Emma Moffatt in the final race. It was also a much more open competition, without Emma Snowsill and Vanessa Fernandes both being injured going into this race (Fernandes ended up not finishing, Snowsill never started). Anyhow, the women's race was much more tactical, as a group of 7 escaped early on the bike, eventually gaining over a minute from a chase pack of 10. Those two groups of cyclists contained zero Canadians and that was it for the Canuck presence. The lead group of cyclists got out of the water between 21:30 and 21:49 and the second group swam 21:47 to 22:08. The two Canadians (Tremblay and Groves) swam 22:17 and 22:14 and those few seconds were enough to eliminate them from contention. By the way, Kirsten Sweetland was a late scratch as she was still not 100% healthy. The race at the front contained the big names (Moffatt, Luxford, Jenkins, Norden, Haskins) and they worked well together to earn a 45 second head start at T2. The race actually came down to a head-to-head race between the 2 main contenders for the jackpot (Norden and Moffatt) but lost a little drama since Norden had to beat Moffatt by 2 spots to win the title. It was funny that Norden kept turning around waiting to see if someone else would bridge up to help her win the overall title. However, it did not matter in the end as Moffatt made a late surge to win the race and the overall World Title. Lisa Norden finished 2nd in the race and 2nd overall...top Canadian was Lauren Groves who ended up way back in 19th place.
Some big news came down last night as it was announced that Bradley Wiggins (Team Garmin - 4th at Tour de France) had arranged a buyout of a his 2010 Garmin contract and would be moving to the new UK-based Team Sky as their team leader. This had been rumored for a while as Wiggins is a UK citizen and would provide a nice boost for the first year team. Team Sky has been very busy since September 1st, as they have also added Simon Gerrans (ex-Cervelo rider who has won stages this year in the the Giro and the Vuelta) and rising superstar Edvard Boasson Hagen (Team Columbia) to their roster for 2010 to go with other notables like Juan Antonio Flecha and Kurt Asle Arvesen. The other news in this article is that the buyout of Wiggins from his Garmin contract was 2 million British pounds, money that Garmin would then use to buy out to Alberto Contador from his Team Astana contract. So it was essentially a win-win-win deal where Astana would get some money, Garmin would be getting Contador in exchange for Wiggins, and Team Sky would be getting the hometown star. However, Garmin's director, Jonathan Vaughters, claimed on Friday morning that "there is no agreement like this" for Wiggins and that Wiggins will continue to ride for Garmin in 2010. I'm predicting that this might be some legal posturing, and would be very surprised if this deal did not go through sometime this fall.
In a related and not surprising move, Alberto Contador re-iterated today that Garmin would be a great option for him in 2010 if he can get out of his Astana contract. I'm not surprised at all since it appears Contador would be happier anywhere but with Astana, especially since a lot of his teammates have already left for greener pastures in 2010.
There have been a number of notable transfers so far this month, with Levi Leipheimer joning Lance at RadioShack, but surprisingly his old buddy George Hincapie did not, opting to sign with BMC Racing. Who? They are a second-tier team (not ProTour but an American based UCI Continental team -like Cervelo and Skil-Shimano this year) who are hoping to take the next step with riders like Hincapie and current world champion Alessanro Ballan.
The weekend ahead includes the final 3 stages of the 2009 Vuelta (Valverde still leads Robert Gesink by 32 seconds with Samuel Sanchez, Ivan Basso, and Cadel Evans 3-4-5) and Ironman 70.3 Cancun. I will talk more about the Ironman world next week...so enjoy the Vuelta and the nice weather!
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