Peiper joins Garmin

Allan PeiperAussie director sportif Allan Peiper will be joining Garmin for the 2012 season. It think this is a wise signing, the team was struggling for managers earlier this year after Matt White got booted out. Indeed the squad too Peter Van Petergem away from his new career as an insurance salesman to get behind the wheel for a few weeks. Whether it was caused or just correlated to Van Petergem’s help, Johan Van Summeren took Paris-Roubaix.

Peiper is from the old school, the tough school. He quit an abusive home for Belgium and the weirdness of the Planckaert household. His book, a Peiper’s Tale recounts a lot of this. When his racing career came to an end he opened a burger bar, operating out of a van and driving to kermesses to supply spectators with hot food. It seemed an abrupt change.

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Riding for pleasure

Jan Ullrich

There’s news that Jan Ullrich is riding amateur events under a false name. He’s calling himself Max Kraft in order to ride smaller events, apparently to avoid the limelight… although obviously he’s been rumbled now and the Belgian media are all over it meaning an end to his privacy. Note Kraft is the German for power so his name is Max Power.

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Where’s Francesca Rossi?

Francesca Rossi

The other day cyclingnews.com carried an interview with Anne Gripper, the former Head of Anti Doping Services at the UCI. The interview is worth reading in its own right but one thing stood for me, the fact that Anne Gripper has left the UCI but she is still a proud voice when it comes to the UCI’s bio passport scheme, the anti-doping system being pioneered by cycling’s governing body. Rightly so since she helped launch it.

Missing?
But Anne Gripper left the UCI and was replaced by an Italian, Francesca Rossi in early 2010. Only have you heard of her?

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Rider recruitment and nationality

Cadel Evans Aussie
This guy could be from Australia

One rider agent has denounced the “dictature of UCI points” when it comes to teams hiring riders. I’ve long suggested these ranking points are important, to the point of twisting incentives within the sport. But teams will recruit for other factors too. Obviously they want to hire riders capable of winning, or if not then good helpers. There are several other factors at play here. But one is nationality. Let’s take a look.

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Who’s going to the Worlds?

Denmark World Champs

Each year the qualification criteria for riding the World Championships varies but the idea is that countries with a higher ranking have the right to send larger teams to the race. For example Spain tops the UCI’s World Tour ranking and it can start nine riders to the men’s elite road race. This is true for all of the top-10 ranked countries, so long as each country has nine riders with World Tour ranking points. The top-10 are picked at the end of the week but today they stand as Spain, Italy, Australia, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Britain, Netherlands, USA and France.

But another clause says that teams have to have nine riders with ranking points and both Britain and Luxembourg fall foul here. Britain has eight riders with World Tour points, meaning it can have eight riders in Denmark; Luxembourg has only two with the Schleck brothers but another sub-clause says Luxembourg must start six riders.

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Marcel Kittel, a sprinter?

Marcel Kittel

Mark Cavendish seems so good you almost wonder what is wrong with the other sprinters. Look around and here’s ageing Alessandro Petacchi, André Greipel is strong but not prolific and Tyler Farrar is fast but usually not fast enough. But there’s a new generation coming, with several Italian riders lead by Andrea Guardini and a crop of Australians, Michael Matthews for example. But right now the Germans seem to have the edge, with neo-pro John Degenkolb already winning at the top level and above all Marcel Kittel. The Skil-Shimano rider took four stages in the Four Days of Dunkirk and last week took another four stages in the Tour de Pologne. But is he a sprinter?

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Peter Sagan’s come a long way

Winning the Tour of Poland today marks Peter Sagan’s first stage race win at “World Tour” level. It wasn’t long ago when he was riding around town on his mountain bike.

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Did Highroad ever have a sponsor?

There’s an air of the obituary across newspapers, cycling news websites and fellow blogs. Everyone’s lamenting the announcement that the Highroad team could not find a replacement sponsor for HTC to keep the team going into 2012 and beyond. And many are asking aloud why such a good team could not find a replacement sponsor.

But one answer is that they never had sponsorship in place since the day the team started.

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The Highroad that comes to an end

“After an exhaustive search to secure long term sponsorship we have concluded that it’s time to release our team members to pursue other options” That’s HTC-Highroad’s team boss Bob Stapleton. I’m travelling right now with a shaky internet connection so can’t cover the topic in detail but the team will fold at the end of … Read more

Red faces for Green Edge?

The Australian headline

“Stuey has wanted to be a part of this project since we first went public with wanting to put a team at the Tour de France, back in Adelaide last January… …We’ll be rolling out more big-name signings in the days and weeks ahead.“

That’s the headline screengrab plus a quote from an article in The Australian, the biggest selling-newspaper Down Under. Only it seems to be premature at best.

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