|
PARIS: History was made, new talents were revealed as drugs cheats
and one of sport’s biggest names, Lance Armstrong, decided to
emerge from retirement to show rivals ten years his junior a trick
or two.
In all, 2008 was another topsy-turvy year for
cycling but for fans drama was abundant from the spring one-day
classics through the Olympics and the three Grand Tours to the
end-of-season world championships.
For better or for worse, cancer survivor
Armstrong decided to end a three-year hiatus from the sport and
return to competition in a bid, to promote the global fight against
cancer.
His comeback at Australia’s Tour Down Under in
January should herald a 2009 rich in drama, if not the usual,
unfounded, doping accusations that seem to follow in his wake.
But before Armstrong hogs the limelight, one
name stood out from the rest in 2008: Alberto Contador.
The winner of the 2007 Tour de France with
Armstrong’s former team Discovery Channel, Contador added the 2008
Giro d’Italia and Tour of Spain crowns to his collection in a year
in which his Astana team was controversially left off the Tour
organisers’ invitees list.
In so doing the 26-year-old became only the
fifth rider in history, after Frenchmen Jacques Anquetil and Bernard
Hinault, Italian Felice Gimondi and Belgian Eddy Merckx to win all
three major Tours - although that quartet racked up several wins in
either one or several of cycling’s three-week Grand Tours.
Contador’s reputation as the perfect stage
racer is well documented, but how he copes mentally with Armstrong
on board his Astana team has yet to be seen.
In a bid to smooth out any ruffles, Armstrong
said of Contador at the start of December: “I have a lot of
respect for this man. I can’t say it any simpler. This guy is the
best cyclist in the world.”
Top riders like Armstrong and Contador avoid the
tough one-day classics like the plague, but for some they are the
real test of a rider’s mettle.
While Belgian champion Stijn Devolder upset
predictions to win the snow-hit Tour of Flanders in early April, his
Quick Step teammate Tom Boonen claimed his second career triumph in
the flatter, but arguably tougher Paris-Roubaix a week later.
Boonen’s balloon would burst months later,
however, a positive test for cocaine ruling him out of the Tour de
France.
Their victories followed a formidable
‘double’ by Swiss ‘Spartacus’ Fabian Cancellara, who won the
Tirreno-Adriatico stage race in March before claiming a first
victory in the one-day Milan-San Remo classic.
In Beijing, where Britain’s track supremos
spectacularly won seven of the 10 golds at the velodrome, Cancellara
won Olympic time trial gold and took bronze in the road race won by
Spaniard Samuel Sanchez.
At Liege-Bastogne-Liege two weeks after Roubaix,
Spanish ace Alejandro Valverde claimed his second win in the oldest
of the one-day classics ahead of Paris-Nice winner Davide Rebellin.
Despite his early season form, Valverde—who in
June won the tough Dauphine Libere stage race ahead of Australia’s
Cadel Evans— would find the Tour de France, and the dominant CSC
team, a tougher nut to crack.
In July a quality field including 2007 runner-up
Evans fought valiantly for the yellow jersey. In the end an attack
on Alpe d’Huez, and a penultimate stage time trial performance
which defied predictions allowed CSC’s experienced Spanish climber
Carlos Sastre to triumph.
But before the Pyrenees and Alps beckoned the
peloton, the race was dragged through the mud.
In all, seven riders tested positive, three for
EPO (erythropoietin) and four for CERA, the latest generation of the
banned blood booster.
Italians Riccardo Ricco and Leonardo Piepoli and
Germany’s Stefan Schumacher all won stages and all tested postive
for CERA. Third place finisher, and the ‘King of the Mountains’
Bernard Kohl of Austria also tested positive for the drug.
Arguably, the only ‘positive’ to emerge from
the scandal was that efforts to actively weed out cheats are bearing
fruit.
“Of course it’s not good for the reputation
of our race, or the sport of cycling, but we are happy the cheats
are being caught,” Tour director Christian Prudhomme said.
-- AFP
|
