I have lots (LOTS!) to get to over the next few days, with lots of triathlon news, running news, etc, so feel free to come back in the next couple, but wanted to try and sort out the biggest story in Pro Cycling (and remarkably, has been since September) and that is the whole Who-will-Alberto-be-riding-with-in-2010?
If you don't know the whole story - here goes. Alberto Contador signed a 3-year contract with Team Astana for the 2008 thru 2010 seasons. Then Astana got blackballed (thank you Alex Vinokourov) for the 2008 Tour, so he just won the Giro and the Vuelta that year. Then Lance comes back in 2009, Alberto and Lance try to play nice, end up sniping thru the summer, Alberto wins the Tour as Lance tries to upstage him, then Lance leaves Astana to start his own team and takes most of the key Astana riders with him. Then Vinokourov comes back from his suspension to rejoin Team Astana (which was essentially created to support him) and Contador wants out. Problem is that he still has a contract and Astana really doesn't want to let him leave. So he's stuck...
The last few months have been full of rumours. At least 5 big ProTour teams have been rumored to be interested in signing Contador if they could work out a deal with him and Team Astana. Once it became apparent that Team Astana was not going to just release him from his contract to save his reported €2 million per year. But Astana insisted he would ride with them for 2010. However, Astana still haven't secured their ProTour license for 2010, which needs to be completed or Contador could walk away and become a very big free agent cyclist.
That is not nearly the end of the story. In the past week, all of these stories have been posted.
1. Last week, it was reported that Contador was re-negotiating a new contract with Astana for upwards of €4 million per year. However, his new contract would contain a provision that if anyone on Astana tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug, he would be free to leave the team.
2. Then came news that Astana has offered Contador a new contract for 4 more years, at a reported €8 million per season. Wow. It appears that Astana wants to simply offer Contador more money than anyone else to keep him. This is twice as much money as they offered him in late July on a similar 4-year deal.
3. Contador's brother and manager is now trying to clear up some of the confusion, saying that Alberto would only remain at Astana for one more year at most. Is this a strategy to maximize the amount of money he can get out of Team Astana? Or are they seriously looking at leaving €32 million on the table?
With all these stories, it might be evident that Contador will be riding in the teal of Astana in 2010. Well, maybe not...
A story today suggested that Team Quick Step has offered Contador a €20 million contract over 4 years. So maybe that explains why Astana upped their offer so much. So they are betting that Contador doesn't re-sign with Astana and that they lose their ProTour status in 2010. Very interesting...
Contador is not only the big name still out there...Bradley Wiggins also has a contract for 2010 (with Garmin) but continues to be rumored to be moving to Team Sky (the new British ProTour team). Team Sky was supposed to announce their entire 2010 team at a media event last month, but delayed the event for unknown reasons. Similar to Quick Step, Team Sky is very vocal in their pursuit of Wiggins. Plus the Contador-to-Garmin-if-Wiggins-leaves-Garmin-for-Sky circle has been rumored for months as well.
So while we are about 2 months from the beginning of 2010, we are still waiting for the last few cycling dominoes to fall? It should be all done by the end of November, but we were assuming that it would all be done by the end of September. Once these two cyclists find homes, then we will sort of the rest of the questions for 2010...but let's deal with those later...
More to come this week - including a preview of Ironman 70.3 Worlds...see you soon!
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