Vuelta, Hamburg, Cycling Market, Worlds and more:

Ok dear readers, it's finally time we started talking about la Vuelta and other random randomness. Unfortunately I couldn't write anything earlier because of some little problems connected to university - and, unfortunately, I won't be able to write anything in the next two weeks, because my parents have decided that our family holiday will start on Saturday. And guess what? I still don't know whether during that holiday I'll be able to watch la Vuelta. I mean, Smiley Menchov is climbing the Angliru in a few days time, and I probably won't be able to witness that event. Isn't that annoying?

Anyway, let's start talking cycling before I get too angry. First thing to mention, the Italian races of the last few days, which saw a great Rebellin get a stunning victory in Trofeo Melinda. The other day I read on la Gazzetta that his team doesn't have the biological passport, so I now have an explanation for his last efforts. I usually don't have doubts about riders who ride really well (I never doubted guys like Gilbert, Cancellara, Evans, etc. ), but imo Rebellin's latest results are too good to be true. Riders usually struggle with finding the race rythm again when they come back racing after a 2 years ban, but right now everything looks terribly easy for Davide - just like, in 2009, everything seemed easy for Riccò.

Anyway, let's leave my suspicious thoughts aside. Italian summer races are always nice because they allow supporters (and the head of the Italian team) to uderstand who the best national riders are. And Trofeo Melinda gave us very good news the other day: in fact Moreno Moser, who is a stagiare, went on a breakaway with 30 kms to go and he was caught just 25 kms later. Moreover, another stagiaire (Moreno Battaglin) was 7th, whereas the young Ratto was 4th. It's great to see the Italian young guns riding so well!

Talking about another topic, Gibert has officially signed for BMC which, next year, will have a very competitive team formed by Hushovd, Evans and PhilGil. Although Phil and Thor may have little contrasts during Sanremo and Tour of Flanders, I believe BMC will be the strongest team of the world in 2012. In fact, no one else has 3 champions who can win every Classic and GT stage they want and who can be competitive from February to October.

Still talking about cycling transfers, Leopard Trek has recently given a contract to Gregory Rast, a solid helper. GreenEdge instead has signed the 'climbing sprinter' Simon Gerrans.

A breakout news of the other day instead says that Vinokourov is already planning to come back racing at the Tour of Lombardy. If he really makes it, I may go watching that race with a Vino 4 ever t-shirt on (ok, just kidding).

After mentioning Leopard Trek, let's talk a bit about los Schlecks: after taking part in different criteriums, the brothers are going to race in the Tour of Colorado, which starts this evening. I would have preferred them to race la Vuelta, but los Schlecks seem to prefer the new American races to the traditional European ones: not only did they race the Tour of California in May (when they could have taken part in the Giro), but now they've preferred the Tour of Colorado to la Vuelta. Less pressure, I suppose.

Talking about the good old European races, yesterday the Hamburg Cycleclassics was won by an amazing Boasson Hagen. I think it's strange for him not to race la Vuelta (after all, he's one of the main contenders for the Worlds victory), but the guy surely knows what's best for him. Second in the race was Gerald Ciolek, whereas third was Borut Bozic. Fourth was a great Simone Ponzi, a young Italian who would deserve taking part in the Worlds. Talking about La Squadra, Bettini will have a tough time in deciding the names of the Italian riders who will take part in the Worlds. In fact Paolo would like to create a team formed by guys like Ulissi, Ponzi, Malori and Modolo - but will these young guns be able to resist in a race as long as the Worlds? That is the question.

After talking about the Hamburg Classic, let's talk about la Vuelta, which took off with a TTT in Benidorm. Unfortunately I couldn't see that stage, but of course I do know the result: an amazing Leopard Trek won in front of Liquigas and HTC. There were many crashes on the first stage and amongst the crashers du jour there were also Davide Viganò, David Blanco and Nick Nuyens. Brajkovic, on the other hand, had a mechanical right after the start. Cavendish instead didn't have any crash / mechanical, but he crossed the finish-line 2' 40" after his teammmates. Strange, isn't it?

The first rider to wear the red jersey was a happy Jakob Fuglsang, whereas a disappointed Carlos Sastre created a little polemic inside his team (source: Gazzetta dello Sport). In a few words, Carlos said that the team (ds, managers, so on) doesn't give enough support to their riders. According to some rumours, Smiley Menchov was even less smiley than usual after the TTT (after which he lost 39" from Nibali) and apparently he complained about his team as well. Geox guys must have done something very bad if they really managed to annoy Menchov: he never looks pissed off and he didn't even insult me when I stalked him heavily in San Pellegrino Terme!

Anyway, back to the TTT: another team who lost a lot of time was Sky (37"), who had some problems with riders losing contact from their teammates. Euskaltel did better than usual, whereas Astana was a good 4th (5" of delay from Nibali).

Yesterday the riders faced a 174 kms long stage from la Nucia to Playa de Orihuela. 4 brave riders went on a hopeless breakaway and the bravest amongst them was Adam Hansen, who probably wanted to put a remedy to his poor TTT (he lost contact from his teammates halfway through the stage). Everyone expected the sprinters to battle in the last meters of race, but no one (not even the race chronists and the journalists) had considered a little climb (about 300 meters with an average of 5%) that the rider had to face with about 800 meters to go. Also many riders looked shocked by that little climb and this makes me wonder why they didn't know about it.

HTC started pulling with 10 kms to go and that was a suicide-move. In fact Cav soon found himself with just 4 helpers, whereas other teams still had lots of riders ready to help their sprinters. With about 3 kms to go, Leopard Trek took the lead. Cancellara, O'Grady, Viganò, Bennati: everything was perfect. Unfortunately in the last curve of the race no one could keep Viganò's wheel, therefore Davide found himself at the head of the race, without knowing that his teammates weren't following him (at least, that's what Bennati said). However, Viganò wisely decided to try his luck, but he was swallowed by the peloton on the little climb before the finish-line. At that point HTC and LT's leadout trains broke down and Boonen tried to attack. Unfortunately for the Belgian, it was still too early and he was soon outsprinted by other guys. Sky's Christopher Sutton followed Omega's Reynes as the Spaniard attacked and he outsprinted the Vicente in the last meters of race. Third was Marcel Kittel, whereas 4th was Farrar, 5th Breschel and 6th Bennati.

"I knew it was a hard uphill finish", a happy Sutton told Cyclingnews. "Someone from Lotto accelerated and I jumped on his wheel. I thought, 'This is a long way to go.' But I looked back and no one was there. I thought, 'Alright, I've got this one.' To win today is a dream come true. I can't believe it". Reynes instead almost broke into tears after the finish-line, whereas a happy Bennati received the fourth red jersey of his career.

Today the Vuelta riders will face another flat stage which features a little climb with 13 kms to go. The victory will probably be decided by a sprint, in which Matthew Goss surely won't take part. In fact the HTC rider abandoned the race yesterday because of some physical problems.

Random randomness, Fiuggi Terme and Tropea's stages of the Giro, Agnoli proposes to his girlfriend and Leopard Trek remembers WW Special:

Given the horrible weather, I'm not going out this evening, so I have some time to rewrite that post of mine that Blogger deleted two days ago and to talk a bit also about today's stage. However, feel free to leave comments also in the comment areas of my previous entries: I'll take a look at my old posts regularly during this month!

SAPRI-TROPEA:
NB: Today's stage of the Giro was dedicated to the memory of 8 amateur cyclist who were killed by a car last December. The car's driver was on drugs and he ran over this group of men as they rode outside Lamezia Terme. 7 riders immediately died, whereas the 8th one perished in hospital a few weeks after the accident.

Sapri - Tropea offered us another exciting final sprint and some jawdropping sea landscapes.
The two breakawayers du jour were Leonardo Giordani (U23 world champion in 1999) and Mirko Selvaggi, who were caught by the peloton with 9.5 kms to go. Those two athletes train together whenever they can and that's why, at the end of their adventure, they embraced each other in a very friendly way.
Today's stage had a very particular finale. In fact, the last kms of race were full of curves and presented a very peculiar climb. Said climb in fact was short and easy, but it presented two hairpin turns which forced many riders to slow down and brake, causing them to lose some seconds from the riders who were at the front of the peloton. Saxo Bank guys knew this and that's why they worked hard at the front of the group in the last kms of race.
With about 2 kms to go, when the riders still hadn't got over the last climb, Farnese's Oscar Gatto launched an attack. Right after Gatto attacked, another rider escaped from the peloton and started to chase him. Said rider was Alberto Contador and I had to check his face twice before I could finally believe what I was seeing.
No one else managed to follow the Spaniard, who was reducing his gap from Gatto in a very fast way.
Eventually, luckily for him, Gatto managed to get the stage victory, while Contador (second in the stage) received a time bonus of 12". Add these 12" to the 5" he gained on the rest of the peloton and you'll discover that, on a simple stage like this one, Contador managed to steal 17" from his main contenders. A bad morale blow for the other Gc contenders, isn't it?
Third in the stage was Petacchi, whereas Kristoff was a surprising 4th.
As a consequence of his great team work, Richie Porte lost 1'43" from Gatto in today's stage, whereas Fabio Duarte got retired during the stage (does anyone know why?).

I must say that I was very happy for Oscar Gatto's victory. In fact you must know that he was considered a great cycling promise as he turned pro, but then he seemed to have lost his sprinting abilities. This year, finally, Oscar has finally returned back to his good old level and he's already got many good victories. As they say, today's victory in the Giro can be considered 'the icing on the cake' - now, what about adding a participation in the Copenhagen's Worlds to that delicious cake? ;)

This afternoon I was also very surprised by Contador's attack, which I didn't expect at all. But still, I think he wanted to send a psychological message to Scarponi (who attacked and almost dropped the Spaniard yesterday) and to Nibali.
Actually, my surprise for Contador's attack made me behave in a very bitter way. In fact, when he escaped from the peloton, my dad said: 'Contador?!? Why is he attacking? I mean, this climb doesn't suit him!!'. Insensitive to my father's excitement, I went: 'Well, it's actually very simple, dad: everyone else's chain must have popped, otherwise Contador would have never attacked. D'you remember le Tour?' Sorry, but at times I really can't handle my bitterness.
Talking about something different, after the stage poor Fabrizio Piacente (RAI's unexperienced journalist) didn't manage to interview Contador for the second time in a week. Dear Fabrizio, I just want you to know that you have all my support.
Moreover, after the stage I was reminded that Kreuziger isn't Italian (he speaks better than me, but this afternoon he failed to understand a question during an interview) and I discovered that Andrea De Luca and Paolo Savoldelli (RAI's journalists) are very good friends. In fact, they watched a post-stage vid together with other journalists and, in the end, they both started to laugh. Asked about this fact, De Luca said that he was laughing because of the vid, whereas Savoldelli said that 'watching De Luca makes me laugh'. What a couple of hilarious boys.

RANDOM LINK TO JOUR:
On http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/schleck-hopes-for-a-strong-performance-at-the-amgen-tour-of-california there's an interview with Andy schleck about Tour of California. I won't be covering this race in the next days (I prefer the Giro to ToC), but I'm sure you'll find regular updates on other blogs ('Eisen Andy', for example). However, if you have tales coming up from ToC, I remind you to send them to Bananas About Bikes: you'll see them published in no time :D

FIUGGI TERME STAGE:
Let's now go back in time talk a bit about Fiuggi Terme's stage, which was won by Ventoso. That was the first 'normal' stage that the riders faced since Special WW's disappearance and I welcomed it with pleasure. Actually, the atmosphere on that day was still pretty tense because of the polemics caused by Orvieto's gravel roads. In particular, after ending that stage Contador declared that the cyclists had to ride on 'roads for goats' (I wonder, why didn't he say the same about Tour's cobblestones?), whereas Ongarato asked: 'Who else has died?' as soon as he crossed the finish-line. That was a terrible comment, to which Zomegnan answered by saying that he doesn't even know who Ongarato is.
However, it was Contador himself who put a stop to all the polemics ('The past has gone, now let's focus on the present), whereas Nibali told the viewers that: 'I'm a Sicilian and I know Etna: everything will be perfect on Sunday because Etna usually stops erupting after 48 hours'.

Fiuggi's stage saw Jussi Veikkanen (first virtual Maglia Rosa of the Giro 2011), Kristof Vandewalle, Yaroslav Popovych, Sacha Modolo and Frederik Veuchelen attacking after a few kms after the beginning. The last breakawayer, Vandewalle, was caught with about 4 kms to go.
Amongst the other attackers du jour there were Kiserlovski (yay!) and Pirazzi, who attacked twice.
The riders had to face a little climb in the last kms of race and the finish itself was slightly uphill. The peloton faced the final climb with a very high pace and many sprinters got dropped.
With 1.5 km to go, Di Luca attacked. He was chased by Petacchi, who then had to start another sprint in order to win the stage. However, Alessandro was so tired that he suddenly stopped pedalling with 5 meters to go, leaving the stage victory to an astonished Ventoso. After crossing the finish-line, Petacchi sat down and said that he had 'just lost 10 years of life'.
In the meanwhile, Garzelli was arguing with Marzoli, who hadn't helped him in the sprint. 'I'm the captain, did you get it?', he told his teammate.

After the finish-line, there were some very nice scenes at 'Il Processo alla Tappa', a very popular Italian transmission related to the Giro. Valerio Agnoli was amongst the 'guests of the day', together with Ongarato and Contador.
While answering the question of a journalist, Agnoli said that right now he's in a very particular moment of his life. Then he looked his girlfriend Giovanna (who was on the stage of the transmission too), took a ring out of his pocket, and asked her to marry him. The girl was really embarassed, but she obviously said 'yes' and she sat down next to her future husband. The couple whispered for some minutes, before we eventually discovered a few things about the proposal. First, Valerio had kept that ring in his suitcase, waiting for the perfect moment, for 6 days. Secondly, Giovanna was very surprised because she 'didn't think that Valerio was in favour of marriages'. Thirdly, she herself had chosen the ring, thinking that it was a present for the mum of Nibali's girlfriend, who is a great friend of hers. And instead she was taken in, since the ring didn't go to mrs. Nibali, but to the future mrs. Agnoli. How nice! (this makes me ask to my readers: which 'cyclistic' proposals did you prefer so far? Frank Schleck, Van Summeren or Agnoli's one?)

As said, one of the other guests of 'Il Processo alla Tappa' on that day was Alberto Contador, who surprised me by saying that Saxo Bank produces everything the riders eat, 'bread included', in order to avoi problems with clenbuterol. Shocking, isn't it?

REMEMBERING WW SPECIAL...
As you all already know, Wouter Weylandt's funeral (I can't believe I'm typing these words...) will take place in Gand on Wednesday morning.
Leopard Trek riders are remembering WW Special with some messages written on their website (link: http://www.leopardtrek.lu/remembering-wouter ) in their own mother tongues. Here's the translation of what Davide Viganò and Luca Guercilena wrote:
Davide Viganò: 'In this moment I’d like to say you a thousand things and, at the same time, I would like to remain silent. I would like to share with you other serene moments, with the smile on our faces, together with the team, in the peloton.
I would like to relive the successes of the past in an even better way, because in this moment I feel as if I haven’t lived them intensely enough.
Ciao WW Special, I’ll miss you…'
Luca Guercilena: "'What do you think man?' That's how you started our conversations every time you wanted some advice, an idea or even just an opinion about your life as a rider.
"I'll miss being able to give you an answer, I'll miss your serene smile every time we found a solution, I'll miss the times when you said 'Grinta' in Italian to make me understand that everything was clear.
"Now nothing is clear anymore. I say goodbye to you and I'm sure that you'll give us the Grinta and a smile to make us go straight towards the finish-line".

Still talking about Wouter, a little anedocte regarding the stage that his colleagues dedicated to him. While riding, Gorazd Stangelj saw a child who had written 'Wouter froever in our hearts' on a cartel. Moved, he tried to give the kid his water bottle, but the kid didn't see it on time and failed to grab it. Therefore Peter Stetina, who saw the scene, solved the problem by giving his own water bottle to the child. Cyclists can be such nice people...

Random post about Davide Viganò plus Random Randomness:

The moment has almost come. The moment when we'll finally discover the name of Team Luxembourg, the colour of its kits and the type of cars that the ds are driving this year. I can't wait. Too bad that, on the day of the presentation, me will be in Austria, with no Internet connection. Therefore, this poor girl who has been waiting since August to know the name of her favourite riders' new team will have to wait until the 10th of January before being able to find out more about it. Anger. Actually, right now Fangirl can imagine herself wandering in Vienna, desperately looking for a Gazzetta. Then she can imagine herself finding that Gazzetta and opening it with eagerness, just to find a big pic of Pozzatolocks on the cycling page. That would be shocking.
On the other hand, Logic doesn't care at all about the presentation of the Schleck's team. 'Come on', she told Fangirl, 'the most important thing is to know which riders are going to race for a team. Therefore, you shouldn't care at all about what the team's name will be, or about what the team's kits will look like. You don't get victories just because of your team's name and because of your kits, do you? So, stop complaining about the damned presentation and answer these questions: how will we manage to go from Bratislava to Vienna on Wednesday? Will we manage not to get lost in the airport? Why does our luggage weight just 7 kgs? These are the things about which you should worry right now, you irresponsible Fangirl. And instead, here you are complaining about missing the presentation of a cycling team. We're going to Vienna in 48 hours time, and all you can think about is that team presentation. I wonder what you have in your head, Fangirl!!'. As you can see, Logic is pretty bitter right now and she'd like me to do something useful rather than staying here writing this post.
Therefore, let's write something that can be defined as 'useful' also according to Logic. So, ladies and gentlemen, here's the random profile of Davide Viganò, one of the less known Team Lux's riders, written by me!

First of all, Davide was born in Carate Brianza on the 12th of June 1984.
He became a pro rider with Androni Giocattoli-3 C Casalinghi in 2005 and in the same year he signed a contract for Quick Step. He rode for this team until 2008, when he started riding for Fuji-Servetto (which, at the time, still had a decent jersey). In 2010 instead Viganò went to team Sky, which he abandoned this year in order to join team Lux.
Davide is 182 cms tall and has a weight of 66 kgs. He is on Twitter too and his profile is on http://twitter.com/volaviga .
In 2005, as soon as he became a pro, Viganò managed to arrive 2nd in a race called 'Criterium dei Campioni'. The following year, with Quick Step, he was 12th in a Vuelta's stage. In 2007 he got his only pro victory so far, a stage at the Tour of Qatar. Said stage was a team time trial and in it Davide rode to victory together with Boonen, De Jongh, Tosatto, Steegmans and others. In the same year he was third in Veenendal-Veenendal (Dutch Food Valley Classic). That year the race ended in a sprint and Viganò did better than a guy like Weylandts, who won a Giro stage last year. Still in 2007, Davide was 4th in a Vuelta stage won by Petacchi (he did better than Greipel, Duque, Zabel and many others) and was 5th in the last Vuelta stage (the one ending in Madrid). As you can tell from these results, Viganò is a very good sprinter who can get good results also at the end of Grand Tours.
The finish-line in Madrid really seems to appeal to Davide, who was 3rd in the last Vuelta stage of 2008. In the same year, he was 4th in GP Beghelli (an important Italian race) and 5th in Giro del Piemonte.
In 2009 Viganò got many good placements with Fuji-Servetto. He was 7th in a Tour Down Under stage, 4th in a stage at Tour de Langwaki, 3rd in a stage of Vuelta Ciclistica Asturias. He also took part in that year Giro and got good results also there: an 8th placement in the third stage, a 4th in Chiavenna's one, an 8th in Milan's one and a 9th in Florence one. As you can see, Davide has often been close to grabbing an important victory, but has never been lucky enough.

In 2009 Davide was also 4th in a Vuelta stage, 6th in Hamburg Classic and got some good placements also at Tour de Suisse.
Last year Viganò raced for Sky, but he didn't take part in any Grand Tour. His best results were a 4th place in Vuelta a Catalunya , two 5th placements in Bayern Rundfahrt and a 6th placement in Vuelta a Burgos.
On team Sky website there is a little biography of Davide, that I've partially copied here:

Davide Viganò hails from Carate Brianza, near Milan, and among his neighbours, when he was growing up, was Gianni Bugno. Bugno was the top Italian cyclist of the early 1990s: a double world champion, and winner of the country's national tour, the Giro d'Italia, in which he wore the famous 'maglia rosa' (pink jersey) of race leader from start to finish.
It is no wonder, then, that he was a hero to the young Viganò, who began cycling when he was eight years old (...). Viganò is a good all-round rider with a strong finish. As he puts it: "I'm fast in the sprints, and okay on the climbs" (...).
Viganò is unusual, for an Italian, in preferring the Tour de France to his country's national tour. "I would prefer to ride the Tour because my condition is better in July than in May, when the Giro is on," he admits.

In another interview, talking about his youth, Davide says that his heroes were Bugno and Ullrich. Talking to Cicloweb (a great Italian website), Viganò also said: 'In my first 3 years as a young racer, I was terribly strong. When I didn't win, I arrived on the podium anyway'. Talking about becoming a pro, Viganò said: 'I must admit that becoming a pro wasn't hard, in fact in my first year I changed team in the middle of the season because I had got many good placements. In August 2005 in fact I went to Quick Step, but unfortunately I broke my wrist in that period and so I couldn't take part in many races. Then I started to have some problems: diseases (ndr; mononucleosis in 2009), familiar problems (ndr; his father died in 2007), injuries... All these things didn't allow me to get very good results during my first years as a pro. However, at Quick Step I could help Steegmans and Boonen during the sprints and I could help Bettini in harder races'.
Talking about himself, Davide said: 'I think I'm a very sincere boy. My only passion is cycling, so I don't usually talk about other things in the interviews...I like riding my bike and relaxing with my family and my girlfriend Emanuela'.

So, this is my short introduction to Davide Viganò.If you want to find out more about him, take a look at http://www.teamsky.com/profile/0,27291,17543_5771654,00.html (there is also a video), http://ilnuovociclismo.forumfree.it/?t=22632081 and at http://www.cicloweb.it/articolo/2010/01/12/hai-voluto-la-bicicletta-scopriamo-il-mondo-di-davide-vigano.html (please don't be shocked by the pictures).
Let's hope Davide will finally stop being cursed by bad luck and let's hope that this year he'll finally get his first professional victory. Good luck Davide!!

PS: as you know, I won't be writing anything about team Schleck's presentation and I'm not going to write anything new before of next week. However, if you want, you can use the comment area to express your ideas about the team's presentation- I'm sure that, even without my control, you'll behave well ;)
Let's hope that the kit won't be horrible and have a good time watching the presentation! Auf wiedersehen!