Astana in Javea

Denia

The new Astana team have just completed their first week of training together here on the Costa Blanca and I would like to say thanks to the riders and staff for being such a friendly and welcoming bunch. As someone who rides in this area all of the time I'm accustomed to seeing the teams here during the winter and I really enjoy the fact that they choose to come to this area to train - it's like a little endorsement for my choice to live and ride here.

For anyone who is interested in non-controversial stuff, the team are still riding in this year's Astana and Discovery colours although they are all on Trek bikes (madone 5.2 black and dark blue frames) and nearly all have the new SRAM red group sets. The mechanics tell me The SRAM kit is seriously good and they have no worries about the move to them. Apparently the shifter/brake leavers have less than 30 components within their bodies while the Shimano and Campy stuff is closer to 100 so much less to potentially look after. The Treks are being replaced in January with 6.9s with new colours while the team are training in the US.

The riders themselves were relaxed and easy to approach for photos and there was no difficulty in meeting Alberto Contador who happily signed autographs for kids from the local cycling club and chatted with me and a friend without any problems (and signed my TDF guide) - no airs or graces and no menacing security to isolate him, hope he is allowed to continue being so approachable.

Likewise, Johan Buyneel was easy going and and spent over 30 mins outside the team mechanic's bus doing questions and answers with the kids (all in Spanish as well) - not quite the two-headed monster that some portray him to be.

The only dark cloud of the week was the total disruption of this morning's last training session (Mon 17th) by the arrival of the UCI testers. Instead of all the cyclists leaving together at 10.00 am, they ended up having to go out in small groups spread out over two hours while the tests were run across prettty much the whole team (although Contador had left the camp to be in France for TdF media/sponsorship commitmemts).

Although the riders, mechanics and team support accept these disruptions as part and parcel of their work, I wonder what would happen in other major sports if this was to happen? I can't imagine the Yankees or the Manchester United football team allowing a day's scheduled training to be completely screwed up by the arrival of these guys - such is life in cycling though.

Anyway, once again thanks to these guys for reminding me that they are, mostly, young men living the dream and that they enjoy a bit of banter and fun like the rest of us. I hope they have a successful year.

Denia

P.S. - I have no doubt this will quickly degenerate into a thread about doping, so forgive me now if I don't bother getting sucked into any debate on it.

poulidor

If you want to avoid controversy at doping discussion you should have written :
It was good for the future of cylcing to see the arrival of the UCI testers... even if there is some little disagreements..

Crankyfeet

Who are you exactly that you would be making a song and dance complaint about training being interupted on the final day by a UCI test? in the interests of any casual observer of cycling in its present situation, random UCI tests are a comforting reassurance.

Why do you pretend that you are an independent observer when it seems obvious by your post that you are connected to the team, and most likely a SRAM representative?

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Denia

As I said the team and the riders clearly accepted it as business as usual and I have nothing to do with the team (or the local bar).

It annoyed me only in as much as I was hoping to get some good photos of a friend and me with the whole team together on their last day and the testing scuppered it, so purely selfish interest on my part and no reflection of a moral stance on the testing procedures.

We run cycling training camps on the Costa Blanca and it's good PR for us and the area when the likes of Astana are here .

Crankyfeet

Thanks for the reply. I apologize for the accusations. But your dissatisfaction at not being able to get a photo seemed to go beyond inconvenience and extend to complaints about UCI compared to other sports.

[PS I edited my original post slightly and took out the refernce to yourself being the barman at Costa Blanca]

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whiteboytrash

Do you have a website for your bike camps ? Be interested in having a look.....

......now come on.... tell us about the Hog..... how much gear was he passing around ? any signs of a bidon with a pipe hacked into it to make a makeshift bong to chase the burning amphetamine smoke with ? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bong)

RdBiker

Yes a website would be really nice to see. You might even get a few customers from my team. It's not much fun riding here in -10C with a lot of snow in the winter...even though now we have hardly any snow here.

What comes to the Astana team being there: it's nice to hear that you can actually to talk to the riders and that they aren't so full of themselves that they wouldn't talk to "us mortals". I wouldn't have actually been very suprised to hear that Contador would've kept to himself mostly, but it's good to know things aren't like that. Can you tell us any more details about their visit? I'll gladly read everything you're willing to write.

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Bikeridindude

I had my Campy shifters apart a couple of months ago to rebuild them, 100 sure seems like a gross exageration. But maybe that was for both of them? Still seems like an extremely gross exageration. If there really is better than a 3:1 ratio in #'s of parts, that's pretty good and I'm all over them. Seems like twisted facts to me though.

whiteboytrash

Yes the SRM shifters have less parts to leave room for the "uppers" to tucked away...... The HOG is like a good chess playing junkie..... always two moves ahead and thinking about the next hit and the hit after that.......

Drongo

I think you're being quite unfair to the Hog. If he answers kids' questions for half an hour there's no way he would dope his riders.

Frigo's Luggage

He would feed the kids to the riders if it made him rich and famous.

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Bro Deal

Shimano shifters have quite complicated mechanisms. Campy uses a much simpler (and better ) design. The mechanic's statement seems to me to be bullshit. You don't take apart Shimano's shifters; they are not user serviceable. So it doesn't matter if they have a million sub-components. It doesn't make the mechanic's job any easier.

I count twenty internal parts for campy. (diagram below)

Getting sponsorship with Astana is a geat coup for SRAM.

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"You are like the wind and I like the lion. You form the tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours." -- Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates

Denia

We are in the middle of a website redesign which will go live next week so apologies for the existing site not being particularly great. If you are interested in visiting us to train you will find details of the camps and cycling breaks at:

www.ciclocostablanca.com

Jan through April normally sees average temperatures around 16-19 degrees so certainly a bit warmer than Finland. If you are interested in combining riding with seeing some pro stage races then the Tour of Valencia (February) and Murcia (normally early March) are good times to be here.

Denia

BRO - The mechanics said they had no problem with the move to SRAM (nor do the riders) and mentioned that the shifiting components had much fewer mechanical parts compared to Shimano and Campy. The speculation of it potentially being easier to maintain was actually from me - if wrong then apologies for my lack of mechanical knowledge or for you thinking the mechanic was "bullshitting" -something he certainly didn't do at any time.

Again for anyone interested, the standard set-up on the chainsets was 53-39 and the rear cassettes appeared to standardise around 23T. A number of the bikes had the red SRAM powermeter boxes hooked up also. Contador was training on carbon bontrager wheels while the majority of the rest (having just moved away from their Astana BMC bikes) were on bontrager classic wheels while awaiting their new Trek bikes in January. The standard saddle was the bontrager in-form model.

Denia