Two Champions, Two Perspectives

This past week Lance Armstrong and Johan Bruyneel held their first press conference for Team RadioShack, as the riders and coaches gathered for training camp in Tucson, Arizona.  During the same week, Giuseppe Martinelli, a veteran directeur sportif who recently joined the re-tooled Astana Team, was interviewed about Astana and its lead rider, Alberto Contador.

Recall that Contador and Armstrong both rode for Astana during the 2009 season. In the Tour de France Contador won the event, with Armstrong capturing the third place overall.  Leading up to and even during the 2009 tour there seemed by many accounts that there existed uncertainty (or rivalry?) as to who the actual lead rider was.  Contador was the more recent champion, having won Le Tour in 2007; Armstrong had won the grand tour of France seven times, from 1999 – 2005.

Armstrong however, had just come out of retirement to return to the ProTour with Bruyneel and Astana.  Armstrong summed it up best perhaps in an interview during the three week grand tour of France.  On any bike team there is one star.  “Those are the unwritten rules.  The strongest man wins the event.  The other riders work for him.  That’s what I’d hope he’d do [speaking of Contador]. I know that’s what I’ll do.”  One way or another Team Astana worked things out.  The team rode in support of Contador and he ended up wearing the maillot jaune in Paris on the champion’s podium.

Return now to news from last week.  During the press conference from the Shack Camp in Tucson, Armstrong spoke clearly and directly to address the issue of his role on the squad. “This team’s not about me”, he said.  Armstrong went so far as to say it would be “irresponsible” to build the team around him, at this point in his career.  “I’m 38 now, I’ll be 39 this season [2010].  We have to look at Levi Leipheimer,  Andreas Kloden, the tactics, the ideas that we use.”   Essentially Armstrong seems to be confirming that the new Team RadioShack is all about racing, building a strong team with several other very capable riders, their abilities, and their chances of wining races, including the Tour de France.

His dynamic, confident personality and well-known competitive spirit aside, Armstrong’s comments should be taken at face value.  Of course he’s going to be a leader on the team he helped create; of course he’s a veteran champion who can both contribute while racing and as a great resource in strategy, tactics, and helping his teammates ride better.  But it’s about the team first, not his own racing aspirations.

Alberto Contador’s role on the Astana squad is quite a bit different.  His role as the lead rider for his team is well-established.  He’s perhaps at the peak of his game presently, and is the defending champion of the Tour de Franc 2009.  In fact, the International Cycling Union presented Contador with the trophy for best rider of the 2009 season at a ceremony in Madrid this week, as reported by Cycling News. Contador’s list of accomplishments include many stage and race victories, two editions as champion of Le Tour (2007, 2009);  he is the only active rider to have won all three Grand Tours.  In 2008 he finished first in both the Giro d’ Italia and Vuelta a Espana.  It makes perfect sense that Astana will ride in support of their champion racer, Contador.

According to a recap on Velonation.com of Astana’s press conference in Pisa, Italy last week during Astana’s training camp, Contador and the team’s race schedule will be structured around the best preparations for the Tour de France via a series of shorter stage races during the season.  It’s yet to be announced if Astana will compete in the first UCI ProTour event of the 2010 season, the Santos Tour Down Under in Australia, where Team RadioShack has already announced it will make its debut.

While Astana saw significant changes to its roster and management with the exodus of Johan Bruyneel, Lance Armstrong, and eight other riders, the team seems to be coming together. With Contador in the lead role, several new riders including veteran Kazakh racer Alexandre Vinokourov, and new team manager Yvon Sanquer, the team will be ready to roll.  All told, the new organization will give Contador a good squad and critical support in pursuit of a successful season in 2010.

In a Cycling News article last week it was reported that Guiseppe Martinelli was brought on by Yvon Sanquer to work specifically with Contador and help him fine tune his road racing next year.  Martinelli’s comments make his perspective clear.  He believes Contador and Astana are better off starting “fresh” as it were, without the likes of Armstrong or Bruyneel, who he recognizes to maybe the two strongest men in cycling, but also the source of unfounded criticism of how Contador has handled his rise to stardom.

Martinelli knows something about champions and stardom:  as a directeur sportif he has led riders to four Giro d’Italia victories (Marco Pantani, 1998; Stefano Garzelli, 2000; Gilberto Simoni, 2003; Damiano Cunego, 2004) and one Tour de France win as well (Marco Pantani, 1998).

As the 2010 season begins next month, surely there will be countless stories to follow, developments to report, tales to be told.  Not the least of these will be how Armstrong, a great racing champion from the past, and Contador, a more recent champion and likely the best all-around cyclist in the world at present, compete in the months ahead.

In reality, it won’t be about how Contador and Armstrong measure up against one another. Rather it will be how they measure up to their own established goals for the 2010 season:  one man will be racing to add to his list of championships, the other man racing for himself in perhaps a different way – to add to his legacy as a great American cyclist, not only as a racing champion, but also a leader helping others achieve all that they can in the peloton and beyond.

By Jeff Ludlum, staff writer