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CSC-Saxo Bank ready to roll
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Just looking at the faces of Team CSC-Saxo Bank’s nine-man lineup Tour de France squad and it’s obvious that this team means business.
With the lone exception of baby-faced Tour rookie Andy Schleck, CSC consists of hard-nosed, bad-asses who intend to impose their will on the race. And maybe even take the overall to boot.
“We bring a strong and experienced team to the Tour,” said team boss Bjarne Riis, the king of the understatement. “Experience counts for a lot in a race like the Tour, which is the hardest and most difficult race of the year. I am quite sure that you will see a lot of us these three weeks.”
Depth and experience are the basic ingredients of the stacked CSC team. Loaded with grizzled veterans who know what it takes to suffer and win, five of the nine starters have won Tour stages and/or worn the yellow jersey.
Despite the absence of a pure sprinter – although Stuart O’Grady might be in the mix if the situation is right – the team brings riders who can do just about everything.
Carlos Sastre and the vaunted Schleck brothers will lead the team’s three-pronged GC attack while head-bangers such as O’Grady, Jens Voigt and Kurt-Asle Arvesen can go on the attack when Riis thinks the peloton is getting too lackadaisical.
Then there’s Fabian Cancellara, the two-time reigning world time trial champion who’s a force larger than life in the TTs and can deliver late-stage attacks that can derail the trains of the top sprinter teams.
Riis – welcomed back to the Tour after a year in purgatory when he was ostracized by race officials following his admission he used the banned blood booster EPO to win the 1996 Tour – said the team is ready to assume its responsibility to dominate the race.
“We have a team who can be strong in all the important stages,” Riis said. “I am confident the team will be very good in the Tour.”
Sastre, Schleck combo
Leading the charge for the GC is eternal Spanish contender Sastre.A stage-winner in 2002 and third in 2006 following the disqualification of Floyd Landis, Sastre has been nearly invisible this spring when most of the Tour contenders have at least won one major race.
The lean climber is hoping that his relaxed preparation pays off when the Tour hits the critical second half
“The truth is that while I have no idea what’s going to happen in the race, I have no doubt that I’m in the best possible condition for this Tour,” said Sastre. “While it’s true I haven’t posted any results this year, it’s because I have a heavy racing schedule in the second of the calendar. I’ve been tranquilo so far this year, but I hope to be among the protagonists when it counts.”
So far publicly, Riis and Team CSC have rallied around Sastre, who toiled for former team leaders such as Tyler Hamilton and Ivan Basso, before finally getting wings to stretch the past two Tours.
But there’s no hiding that if Sastre stumbles, the ambitious Schleck brothers will be ready to step in.
Frank Schleck, 28, won the Alpe d’Huez stage in 2006 and hopes to crack into the top 10 at the very least in his third Tour start. He crashed heavily at the Tour de Suisse when he fell into a ravine after coming in too hot into a corner, but he says he’ll be riding pain-free for the Tour.
“I will be traveling with a chiropractor during this Tour to help me with my back. Luckily, I wasn’t serious injured in the fall, but I did bang up my back pretty bad,” Schleck said. “We will be riding for Carlos, but we will have our chances, too.”
Andy, 23, will make one of the most highly anticipated Tour debuts in years. Second overall last year at the Giro d’Italia, some are calling the younger Schleck an outsider for overall victory.
Schleck, known for his coolness under fire, was quick to shrug off the growing pressure.
“This is just my first Tour, so I’m taking it day by day. Right now I am 100 percent in form and I did some good work at the Tour de Suisse, so we’ll see where I end up,” Schleck said. “After the Giro last year, the press is calling me a favorite. I am just happy to be part of such a strong team. I don’t consider myself a favorite. I’m here to learn and to work. Just making it to Paris would be like a podium for me.”
Cancellara, O’Grady unleashed
If Sastre and the Schleck brothers are the sharp end of the CSC stick, then Voigt, Cancellara and O’Grady are the team’s deep middle trunk.All three have won stages and worn the yellow jersey. All three promise to live up to their well-earned reputations as old-school tough bastards who can give as well as they can take.
Cancellara, a two-time prologue winner, is missing the departure from the Tour’s tried and true blueprint, but said he can still see a scenario where he could end up in yellow.
“It’s different for the Tour to start without a prologue. Without time bonuses, I can stay close and maybe win the time trial and take the yellow jersey Tuesday,” said Cancellara, a winner of eight races this year. “I go into tomorrow’s stage with calmness because I know I have good legs. Who knows? Maybe I can even win the stage!”
O’Grady is back in the Tour following his horrendous crash in the Alps last year that saw him recovering in a French hospital for nearly a month. He was back to full health just in time to race the classics, only to crash out of the Giro’s first stage with a broken clavicle.
“It was a pretty serious crash and I will try not to repeat it this year, but that’s part of our sport. It’s dangerous and accidents happen. The team was fantastic in supporting me and allowed me to get back into good condition without hurrying me,” he said. “I recovered pretty well from what happened last year. I’m at the service of the team. We have a strong team here and I feel as good as I did at this time in last year’s Tour. I am looking forward to the race.”
Voigt unplugged
Voigt remains one of the most irrepressible forces in the peloton. He shows no sign of slowing down and promises to attack when the time is right.
“We’ll get our three climbers to the Pyrénées and then we’ll see what happens, Voigt said. “Sometimes an attack is the best offense. Bjarne will send me up the road when he wants to create some chaos in the peloton.”
The blonde-haired German provided some laughs when a journalist asked him which characteristics he would combine from Team CSC riders to make the perfect rider.
“That’s easy. The time trial legs from Fabian, the speed of Stuey, the climbing legs of any one of our climbers and then my attitude,” Voigt said. “We would be winning not only 12 Tours, but 12 worlds and 12 Liège-Bastogne-Liège. It would be easy to win. I think it would be boring for everyone else, because they would be racing for second place.”
Another journalist got Voigt riled up when he asked him if how the peloton has improved since riders protest as part of the 1998 Festina Affaire, which blew the lid open on organized doping within the sport a decade ago.
“I’m around for a long time, so I witnessed that firsthand. As far as my experience, we didn’t protest against the tests, but in the method with which they were done, because riders were taken to police station and treated like criminals,” Voigt said. “In the 1998 Tour, more tests needed to be done. We’ve traveled a long way since then. We did a lot of testing, as far as I can see, to move one step further, people would have to move into my house and live with me. We’ve cleaned up our sport as good as we could and I am sure this Tour will be better. Now we can go back and just do our sport.”
Released test levels
Not only do CSC riders submit to tests from the UCI, WADA and the French federation, they also participate in the team’s own internal program.The team released those results on Friday in an effort to show its commitment to riding clean.
The distribution of results is the second such release in the team's history, carried out in cooperation with Rasmus Damsgaard and Bispebjerg University Hospital.
More than 1000 tests have been taken from the riders since the introduction of the program in connection with the 2007 season and every single one of these tests have been negative.
In a press release, the team announced that all of CSC Saxo Bank's rider blood profiles are being made public "once again to underline the transparency and independence of the program as well as to document the team’s wish to pioneer in the fight for a clean sport."
"The program is one hundred percent independent and authorized and approved by the UCI, and it is both valuable as research and at the same time the tests also function as proper anti-doping tests with full legal validity.
"All tests are performed unannounced and approximately 80 percent of the tests are done outside competition. The test results are sent directly from WADA accredited labs to the UCI and then to Bispebjerg University Hospital. In this way the team has no access to the results before they are collected and registered at Bispebjerg University Hospital."
The tests are conducted without warning and under the auspices of two UCI-certified units: The Swedish International Doping Test & Management and the German PWC (”Physical Work Control.”) used to establish a rider's whereabouts. The team said that none of its riders has missed a test due to incorrect information regarding his location or because of a failure to show.
The report can be downloaded from the team's Web site.
Team CSC-Saxo Bank for 2008 Tour de France
Fabian Cancellara (Swi)
Carlos Sastre (Sp)
Andy Schleck (Lux)
Fränk Schleck (Lux)
Nicki Sørensen (Dk)
Jens Voigt (G)
Stuart O’Grady (Aus)
Kurt-Asle Arvesen (N)
Volodymir Gustov (Ukr)
