It has come to light that the Schleck brothers, Andy and Frank, will leave the Saxo Bank team at the end of the season and have a Luxembourg-based team built around them in the same way that Team Sky has been launched as a vehicle for Wiggins.
For five years the brothers have ridden alongside each other, under the management of 1996 Tour de France winner,Bjarne Riis. Despite Riis's dodgey reputation in light of his admission that he used EPO throughout his career, most notably during his legendary 1996 Tour de France victory, his team have never had a rider test positive, and the Schlecks are seen as two of the cleanest, nicest guys on the circuit. Saxo Bank managers have done a good job of distancing the team from dopers: Ivan Basso, the team's GC hope for the 2007 Tour de France, was removed from the race and subsequently fired following allegations that he was in someway involved with the Operation Puerto doping case.
The Schlecks are both potential winners of the Tour de France, but Andy has five years and three consecutive white jersey wins on Frank. He should be the focus of the new team that hopes to add a fifth Tour de France win to the country's already impressive haul of four. Andy must win the Tour within the next decade - his failure to do so would be one of the greatest tragedies in modern sport, akin to Jan Ulrich's inability to clinch a second Tour after his blistering arrival on the scene, and, more heart-breakingly, Colin Jackson's failure to win Olympic gold. That still strikes the British as a gross injustice. Let's hope each and every Luxembourger is spared the same fate by the power of Schleck.
BREAKING NEWS: It has been announced that Alberto Contador, three time Tour de France and one-time Giro and Vuelta winner, will join up with Bjarne Riis on the soon-to-be-dfunct Saxo Bank team. Whichever sponsor takes over - expected to be a bike manufacturer - will have a great deal of talent to manage. Will the Tour finally come to Riis, but from a source other than the Schlecks? Time will tell whether the '96 champion is cursed or not, and for ANdy Schleck's sake, I hope he is!
Pick up THE HARE newspaper at Night and Day; Bar Centro; or Tiger Lounge in Manchester town centre, or the Oakwood in Glossop.
E-mail theharenewspaper@hotmail.co.uk with questions, comments or contributory pieces.
No comments:
Post a Comment