Doping

It’s been quite a while between drinks, but I’ve found some time to put another piece together, giving you the scoop on what’s happening inside the professional peloton.

The Tour de France went okay for me except for a crash in the first week that gave me a niggling injury for the next two weeks. The crowds in Yorkshire were incredible, but a little too enthusiastic at times which made things dangerous, as I found out. But compared with the north of France where the crowds were thin and blasé, and where it pissed rain for days on end, I can’t complain.

Now that we’re into the second half of the year, all the riders are talking about transfers and who’s going where. For a start it looks like Theo Bos is going to MTN-Qhubeka. The word on the street is that the team is bolstering its squad and that Brian Smith (who used to run Cervelo Test Team) is coming on board and has brought on Cervelo to the team next season. Expect big things from MTN-Qhubeka and don’t be surprised to see them at the TdF next season and at WorldTour level in 2016. They’ve also signed some other big name riders who you’ll hear about shortly.

Fernando Alonso’s team has been very flakey all year but then out of the blue there’s been some activity. At this point it’s impossible that Alonso will make his own team from scratch. Realistically the only possibility is that they’ll take over Cannondale’s license. I’ve heard that all the riders under contract and the Cannondale bike sponsorship will go to Garmin, then the infrastructure (license, trucks, service course, etc) would go to Alonso (if he pulls it off). CSG (Cannondale Sports Group) in the US has taken over the WorldTour license from the Italian management company, so the whole thing’s a little convoluted to me.

Alonso wants to put this team together but apparently his manager and his father think it’ll take his eye off the ball with his F1 driving. The gossip is that all he’s really done is put his name to the project and lined up a couple Middle Eastern investors. They said they’d put in a percentage of the money but the whole project went pear-shaped when it came out that all Alonso wanted to do was to put his name beside it. He’s making out that he’s the saviour of cycling, but he’s not actually putting a penny into the project.

Nobody that I’ve heard of has signed with this Alonso team, but it’s always a chicken and egg scenario. They need the license first. The only way I could see them getting a license is if they took over Cannondale’s WorldTour license, but they’d still need to meet the requirements for the bank guarantee. I’m sure they’d get a time extension after the deadlines to meet the requirements and have a certain number of riders signed.

News came out last week that Edvald Boasson Hagen is leaving Sky and from what I hear he’s in talks with Alonso. But then it’s also rumoured that he’s signed with Tinkoff-Saxo. This would be a good move for him, but from what I know Tinkoff-Saxo is already full up, so I can’t see it happening. One thing I do know is that Ivan Basso is definitely going to Tinkoff-Saxo.

Speaking of Tinkoff-Saxo, Oleg Tinkoff isn’t always as crazy as he makes himself sound on Twitter (well, aside from his weekend escapades). I’ve met him before and yeah he’s eccentric, but he’s obviously quite a smart guy. What sets him apart is that he simply doesn’t give a sh*t what anyone thinks about him.

Peter Sagan would be far better off being on a team that’s solely based around him, rather than joining Tinkoff-Saxo and having to share the limelight with Alberto Contador. But having said that, nobody would pay as much as Tinkov would.

Let’s face it though: Sagan isn’t a master tactician. He’s a bit of a dumb-ass. But now he’ll have Bjarne Riis in his ear telling him what to do. Whoever has been shouting race tactics at him so far is a bit of a moron. Sagan’s just so strong that he’s able to win anyway. Riis is one of the best tacticians going around, so it’ll be a good move for him.

This whole Rohan Dennis mid-season transfer situation is bizarre. Dennis has a bit of a reputation for being pretty volatile — when things aren’t going his way he’s known to tell everyone to go and get f***ed.

I reckon what probably happened with the transfer was that he wasn’t getting along with people at Garmin-Sharp, and because he had a contract with BMC next year anyway, Vaughters was happy for him to go so he didn’t have to pay him for four months. JV has a reputation for being a tight-ass with his money.

It’s been interesting watching the Roman Kreuziger case unfold. The whole thing stinks if you ask me. If he had done something wrong years ago, why didn’t they stop him then? Oleg Tinkov has a very good point — the UCI should have told Tinkoff-Saxo that Kreuziger was under suspicion before they signed him. It’s unbelievable. If Tinkov is paying Kreuziger all this money, the UCI should compensate him. I don’t know if Kreuziger has been doing anything dodgy or not, but I’ve seen many instances where the bio-passport system got it wrong.

One case that the biological passport did get right was Jonathan Tiernan-Locke. When he popped back into the scene I just took one look at the way he was riding and I knew 100% that he was loaded up to the eyeballs. He had basically been off the bike for five years and had a reputation for bouncing off the walls of the nightclubs during that time.

Then he comes back on a sh*thouse team and is riding off the front against the best riders in the world, and putting minutes into them. Had he ever done that before? I didn’t need to look at any bio passport when he came back — I just knew because of the way he was annihilating everyone else in the races that he was up to his eyeballs on EPO.

Nobody at this year’s Tour stood out to me like that. I think you can safely say that the majority of peloton is clean now. There are always grey areas and people will try to push the limits, but I don’t think anyone can get away with flat out cheating anymore. Even Nibali winning by eight minutes — if Contador and Froome were there it would have been a battle of seconds. That’s not to take anything away from Nibali — he was super impressive, particularly on the cobbles of stage 5 when he rode away from Sagan and Cancellara.

Of course the Vuelta isn’t far away now and with the way Chris Horner is riding now, I think he will definitely be on the podium. But Froome is out training like a madman and is looking for blood. I didn’t think Contador would start, but last week he announced that he is. Glad I’m not racing the Vuelta – it’s going to be a stronger line-up than the TdF!

It’s a nervous time for many riders including myself during this stressful contract period. I am planning on racing straight through until the end-of-season Classics and giving it everything I’ve got to make sure I get a good deal for 2015!

Until next time,

The Secret Pro