Thinning peloton

The season that ended will be remembered for a series of doping scandals

The jubilee, 100th race on the roads of Italy, the Giro Di Lombardia, ended the next season of road cycling pros. There are only a few insignificant starts on the international calendar until the end of the year, so we can already sum up the results. The Giro Di Lombardia was won by the recognized master of one-day racing - the owner of the track, winner of the gold medal at the Athens Olympics and winner of the recent World Championship, Paolo Bettini, nicknamed the Cricket. His participation in this start was in question, since two weeks ago the athlete’s brother died in a car accident. However, Bettini still decided to compete and brilliantly prevailed over his main rivals from the world peloton. As for the standings of the Pro Tour series, the Spaniard Alejandro Valverde, a teammate of our Vladimir Karpets in Il Balears, excelled here.

The Pro Tour is only in its second season, having displaced the World Cup from the calendar. Valverde won by a more significant margin than the Italian Danilo Di Luca last year. The Spaniard earned 285 points, 72 points ahead of Samuel Sanchez Gonzalez from the Basque cycling stable Euskaltel. Previously, this 28-year-old racer lacked stars from the sky, and until 2006, the highest achievement in his career was winning one of the stages of the 2005 Vuelta. Luxembourger Frank Schleck took third place in the Pro Tour with 165 points. The best of the Russian-speaking cyclists was Kazakhstan's Andrey Kashechkin (Astana) - fifth position in the final ranking with 156 points, the strongest of the Russians Denis Menshov (Dutch "Rabobank") finished in 28th place. In the club standings, the top three look like this: Danish CSC, Il Balears and Rabobank; in the nations standings - Spain, Italy, Germany. Russia rounded out the top ten.

The past season for road cycling turned out to be extremely negative and, if it added popularity to the sport, it was extremely scandalous. The doping exposure of the Tour de France winner, American Floyd Landis, the large-scale investigation of the Spanish police “Operation Puerto” into the case of Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes and the associated numerous suspensions of famous riders from the starts, the disbandment of the Liberty Seguros team - all these events became a dark spot on the reputation of the bike highway. Moreover, such authoritative cyclists as Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso and others were directly and indirectly involved in the scandal. Fortunately, doping scandals have bypassed the Russians.

Since the scoring system in the Pro Tour has undergone changes, it would be incorrect to compare the points scored last year with the baggage of this season. Russia retained its position in the standings of nations, but Kazakhstan, through the creation of its own government-funded Astana team, which arose from the wreckage of Liberty Seguros, made an impressive leap from 11th place to seventh - primarily due to the victory of Alexander Vinokurov at the Vuelta and the excellent performances of Andrey Kashechkin.

For our strongest bicycle highway master Denis Menshov, the season did not turn out in the best way. Victory at one of the stages of the Tour de France and fifth place in the general classification of the Great Loop were offset by an unsuccessful performance at the Vuelta, where last year the athlete from Oryol scored most of the points. Vladimir Karpets performed consistently, but due to the fact that Valverde was considered the first number in Il Balears, the Russian was often assigned auxiliary roles. He never won a single victory.

Vladimir Gusev, who after the end of his career as the illustrious Vyacheslav Ekimov, continued the Russian traditions in the American Discovery Channel, added noticeably. At many prestigious races, Gusev finished in the top ten, won the prologue at the Tour of Germany and was the best in the overall standings of the Tour of Saxony. If not for the mistake of the organizers of the legendary Paris-Roubaix race, when shortly before the finish three athletes from the pursuit group of the Swiss Fabian Cancellara were blocked by a railway barrier, Gusev could have become one of the heroes of these competitions. Let us remind you that then the cyclists drove around the barrier and were disqualified for “violating traffic rules.”

The future of world cycling is uncertain. The organizers of the three largest races (Tour de France, Giro d'Italia, Vuelta) have serious disagreements with the leadership of the International Cycling Union and even appealed to the USI with a request to exclude them from the Pro Tour series, but the international calendar and has not undergone any changes. It is still unclear whether Giro 2006 winner Ivan Basso and Big Loop 1997 winner Jan Ullrich will be able to take part in the competitions in the future. Suspicions in connection with Dr. Fuentes and, accordingly, in the use of prohibited drugs have not been removed from them, but at the same time, the guilt of the riders has not been proven in any way. A whole army of lawyers is now working for Landis, who is trying to explain the increased levels of testosterone in his body by natural characteristics. But it is unlikely that the American will be able to achieve an acquittal.

Ilya TRISVIATSKY