Although this season is far from over with big races such as the Vuelta a Espana, the Tour of Lombardy and the World Championships still to be won, one of the main talking points of next season has already presented itself. Will Andy Schleck be able to win the Tour de France as part of a new team, and in so doing, defeat his ex-directeur sportif Bjarne Riis and the reigning Tour champion Alberto Contador?

Both riders will be riding for new teams, Contador will be in the unusual position of riding for the team Andy Schleck has just left, while Schleck, along with brother Frank, has moved away from Riis to start a Luxembourg based team. Incidentally, as well as Contador and Schleck, the third rider who finished on the Tour podium will also be riding for a different team next year. Denis Menchov will be making the move from Rabobank to Mauro Gianetti’s Team Geox. This will be the first time ever that all of the podium finishers in the Tour de France have changed teams for the following season.

In a recent Real Peloton podcast Matt Rendell said this when discussing Frank and Andy Schleck’s move to their new Luxembourg team

these guys are at the top of their game, they’re suddenly going to a new set of structures and they’re going to have to bed in there and gel with new team mates

While the Tour de France itself is a test of physical strength, a move to a new team could prove to be an ample test of mental strength for both of the major contenders. As Joe Lindsey pointed out in a recent article, Contador has certainly proved in the past that he has the resolve to deal with the most taxing of challenges.

To summarise, the Spaniard has bounced back from a life threatening injury sustained early in his career. He was implicated in Operation Puerto and witnessed the subsequent demise of his Liberty Seguros team. But he found his feet once more, signing for Johan Bruyneel’s Discovery Channel team. Having won the Tour in 2007, he was dealt the blow that he would be prohibited from defending his crown in 2008.

Andy Schleck, Alberto Contador, and Denis Menchov will all be riding for new teams next year.

Again he regrouped and did the most impressive thing possible given the circumstances, he won the other two Grand Tours instead. In 2009, through no fault of his own, he found himself lodged in the middle of the Armstrong/Bruyneel relationship. Instead of letting underhand tactics and snide remarks from within his own team get him down, he got on with his work and won the Tour again. Finally, this year, Contador was faced with the ignominy of every one of his 2009 Tour team mates moving to Armstrong’s Radio Shack. Yet again, he coped admirably and won the Tour for a third time. Contador’s route to becoming a triple Tour winner has most certainly not been plain sailing.

Both Schleck and Contador are now faced with the prospect of trying to win the Tour while riding for a new team. Since the re-introduction of trade teams in 1962*, there have been 47 editions of the Tour. On only six of these occasions has a rider won the Tour during his first year on a new team. It does not bode well for Andy Schleck that two of these six riders are Alberto Contador and Bjarne Riis.

Contador achieved this feat in 2007 during his first year riding for Discovery Channel. Although he won the Tour that year, he was not signed to a team that expected him to challenge for the yellow jersey. When Contador joined the Bruyneel setup, Ivan Basso was the undisputed leader and a major favourite to win the Tour. When Operation Puerto eventually caught up with the Italian, leadership duties were bestowed upon the next rider in line, Levi Leipheimer. Bruyneel expected Leipheimer to challenge for the podium while setting the more modest goal for Contador of the white young rider’s jersey. This allowed Contador to rise to the top of the cycling world uninhibited by pressure and expectation, a luxury which will not be afforded Andy Schleck on his new team.

When Bjarne Riis won the Tour in 1996 he had just left the Gewiss-Ballan team to join Team Telekom. One of his main rivals for the Tour that year was Evgeni Berzin, winner of the Giro in 1994, and runner up in 1995, who was riding for Riis’s former team under the tutelage of Riis’s former team manager. The Russian took the yellow jersey on stage seven only to cede it to Riis two days later. Riis went on to wear it all the way to Paris, while Berzin faded badly to finish the Tour in 20th.

Bjarne Riis won the 1996 Tour de France beating his ex-teammate along the way.

Due to Contador’s impending transfer to Saxo Bank, Schleck will also be faced with the prospect of attempting to defeat a rider being guided by his former team manager. And in Riis, Schleck will be up against a man who knows him extremely well and who has faced, and won, this type of psychological battle before.

Although Schleck has signed up for a brand new team, there will be some elements of continuity. Kim Andersen, a directeur sportif at Saxo Bank since 2004 will be on board to aid the young Luxembourg rider. A handful of Schleck’s current Saxo Bank team mates will also be there. Along with his brother Frank, Jens Voigt, Jacob Fuglsang and Stuart O’Grady are all expected to ride for the new Luxembourg team. However, unlike Contador, Schleck has only ever ridden for one professional team under one team manager. As Matt Rendell suggested, having never gone through this process before, he is going to need time to bed in and gel with new team mates. A further fact which Andy Schleck will not want to hear is that the Tour de France has never been won by a brand new team. As I’m sure Carlos Sastre (Cervelo 2009) and Bradley Wiggins (Team Sky 2010) will attest to, it is not an easy task.

There are plenty of subplots which will be interesting to see develop as Contador and Schleck take to the road for their new teams. But most of the problems one could expect to face, Contador and Riis have overcome before, while Andy Schleck has not. The Luxembourg rider will be under pressure to finally deliver the goods, having now placed 2nd in three Grand Tours. Contador will be under pressure of his own to become the 6th rider to win four Tours de France. But Contador has far more experience dealing with the change and upheaval that will be faced by both riders next year. It’s early doors yet, but Contador will likely be far better equipped to win the 2011 Tour de France, and if he does, he will become only the 2nd rider ever, after Greg LeMond in 1989 and 1990, to win the Tour two years in a row with two different teams.

*Trade team’s participation in the Tour was put on hiatus in 1967 and 1968 when international teams competed once more, but the trade teams returned in 1969 and have been present ever since.

The Vuelta a Espana is now just over a week away, it starts on August 28th with a team time trial around Seville which is due to take place at night. There have been races staged before which took place under street lights, a stage earlier this year in the Tour of Oman comes to mind, and there are many criteriums which are raced after the sun goes down. However, a Grand Tour stage is a very different proposition. There has been plenty of peloton power exercised by the riders in recent Grand Tour stages.  In this year’s Tour after a huge amount of riders crashed on the decent of the Stockeu on Stage two, a go slow was organised followed by a neutralised bunch sprint. Similarly, in last year’s Giro, due to rider’s concerns about hazards along the Milan circuit on Stage nine, the peloton decided not to race until the last of ten laps. This year, it’s the turn of the Spanish Grand Tour to host what could prove to be a controversial stage. Although the riders will not be racing as a bunch, and therefore won’t be able to act as one, if the organisation of the opening team time trial is not perfect, there is definitely potential for grievances and complaints.

For a team to be successful in a team time trial they must work in complete harmony. It is the one stage of any race where no rider can ride for themselves. However, because we are in the thick of the transfer season, many team leaders have already announced that they will be leaving their current teams to ride elsewhere. Big name race favourites such as Andy Schleck, Frank Schleck, Roman Kreuziger, Carlos Sastre and Denis Menchov will all be riding for new teams next year. While we should have no reason to believe that this would compromise any rider’s professional approach toward the race, surely the fact that a team leader no longer wishes to ride for his current team will play on the minds of their domestiques.

The 2001 Giro d'Italia podium. The only Giro or Tour podium full of riders who competed in that year's Vuelta.

Andy Schleck and Denis Menchov will be taking part in the Vuelta having finished on the podium of this year’s Tour de France. Surprisingly this is only the 4th occasion on which two Tour podium finishers will ride the Vuelta in the same year. This happened in 1956 (Walkowiak and Bauvin), 1973 (Ocana and Thevenet) and most recently in 2006 (Pereiro and Sastre). The fact that Tour de France winner Alberto Contador will not be competing in his home Grand Tour continues the trend of there never having been a year where the top three finishers in the Tour all competed in the that year’s Vuelta.

Interest in the Vuelta by the Giro podium finishers fares little better, with the Spanish Grand Tour having only once played host to the top three finishers in the Giro. That year was 2001, when Gilberto Simoni, Abraham Olano and Unai Osa filled the Giro podium and all competed in the Vuelta that September. Obviously the Giro comes before the Tour in the racing calendar, as did the Vuelta pre-1995, which means that the Tour podium for the year was unkown before these races occurred, but we won’t let that get in the way of a nice piece of trivia!

The Vuelta a Espana was first raced in 1935. Due to the outbreak of the Spanish civil war and subsequently World War II, it was put on hiatus for a number of years. As a result, the Vuelta has taken place in the same year as a Tour de France on 66 occasions. In addition, the Vuelta has taken place in the same year as a Giro d’Italia on 67 occasions. This gives a total of 133 combinations of Vuelta/Tour and Vuelta/Giro, which in turn gives us 399 riders who finished on the podium in the Tour or Giro in the same year that there was a Vuelta a Espana. Yet, only 62 of these 399 riders decided to race the Vuelta in the same year, that’s just 15%.

The first rider to ride the Vuelta in the same

Fiorenzo Magni. The first rider to finish on the podium of either the Tour or Giro and ride the Vuelta in the same year.

year as finishing on the podium of the Giro or Tour was Fiorenzo Magni aged 35. He won the Giro d’Italia and also won three stages of the Vuelta in 1955. The first rider to finish on the podium of either the Tour or Giro and the Vuelta in the same year was Jacques Anquetil in 1963 when he won both the Vuelta and the Tour de France. In doing so he became the first of only two men to win the rarest of Grand Tour doubles, the other was Bernard Hinault in 1978.

On 18 occasions a rider has finished on the podium of the Vuelta and also on the podium of another Grand Tour in the same year. The most recent examples come from 2008 when Contador won both the Vuelta and the Giro, while Carlos Sastre finished 3rd in the Vuelta and won the Tour. The only rider who has finished on the podium of the Vuelta and also on the podium of another Grand Tour twice is Mr. 2nd Place, Raymond Poulidor. He suffered the ignominy of finishing 2nd in both the Tour and the Vuelta in 1965. But the previous year, he finished 2nd in the Tour and managed to win the Vuelta, a Grand Tour victory oft forgotten amongst his superfluity of near misses at the Tour de France.

Two more interesting Grand Tour podium facts before I call it a day… In 1973, three of the six podium finishers at the Giro and the Tour rode the Vuelta. And these three riders, Eddy Merckx (1st in the Giro), Luis Ocana (1st in the Tour) and Bernard Thevenet (3rd in the Tour) managed to fill the Vuelta a Espana podium.

Finally, that famous 8 second gap meant that 1989 was the only year that the Tour de France podium consisted of the winners of all three Grand Tours, Greg LeMond (Tour), Laurent Fignon (Giro) and Pedro Delgado (Vuelta).

Two things I learned in the past week:

1. In Utrecht, cycling is an absolute pleasure.
2. In Dublin, cycling is an absolute battle.

Prior to this week, Dublin has been the only city in which I have had the experience of cycling and having now had the pleasure of cycling in Utrecht, it is clear that Dublin is a complete disaster in comparison. While Utrecht has an infrastructure of proper two-way, unbroken cycle lanes with their own traffic light system, Dublin city council deem it sufficient to paint a red stripe on the side of roads, the refurbishment of which, apparently cost the government €800,000 last year. This is embarrassing. The cycle lanes in Dublin are just plain dangerous in plenty of places and are a result of irresponsible and uninformed planning. There is a Flickr account dedicated to documenting the appalling Irish cycle lanes, some of the photos up there are really quite disturbing.

Cycling around Utrecht, here was a photo op in front of the Dutchest scene I could find.

So having been off the radar in Utrecht for the past while (where I delivered a paper concerning Irish Traditional Music at the ISMIR conference, here’s a link to the paper if anybody is interested), I haven’t really had the chance to comment on Daniel Martin’s fine win in the Tour of Poland. It’s the biggest win of his career so far by some distance, his best result previously had been a win in the Route du Sud, a 2.1 category French stage race. But the Tour of Poland is a Pro Tour race, and is now, although hasn’t always been, far more prestigious than the Route du Sud. Former winners of the Tour of Poland include Jens Voigt, Kim Kirchen and former World Road Race Champions Alessandro Ballan, Laurent Brochard and Maurizio Fondriest.

Martin came close to winning a Pro Tour stage race last year in the Volta a Catalunya where he finished in 2nd place overall. On that occasion he was only beaten by the now suspended Alejandro Valverde. When the Spaniard’s suspension was finalised recently for his involvement in Operacion Puerto, it was decided that he would be allowed to keep all his results which were obtained before 1st January 2010, which meant sadly, that Martin remains in 2nd place in the 2009 Volta a Catalunya. His victory in the 2010 Tour of Poland is the first victory for an Irishman in a top level stage race since his uncle Stephen Roche won the 1991 Criterium International. It is also the first Irish victory in a national Tour since Seán Kelly won the 1990 Tour de Suisse.

Martin will not be racing the Vuelta a Espana which starts at the end of this month, instead his program will be focused on the remaining classic races of the season. He will be targetting the GP Ouest-France (where he finished 5th last year), and the Tour of Lombardy (where he finished 8th last year).

But fear not, for there will be an Irish presence at the third Grand Tour of the year. Nicolas Roche will be aiming to carry his great form in the Tour de France through to September. Roche last rode the Vuelta in 2008 where he narrowly missed out on a stage win, coming off second best in a two man sprint against Imanol Erviti. Roche went on to take 13th place overall in what was then only his second Grand Tour. Since then, Roche has ridden and finished two Tours de France. He is getting stronger and stronger, and if he has managed his training and form well, he could well be in contention for a stage win and another solid G.C. performance.

Roche may be joined in Spain by Philip Deignan who has made it on to Cervelo’s eleven man shortlist, from which nine riders will be picked for the race. Last year Deignan famously won Stage 18 of the Vuelta powering away from Roman Kreuziger in Avila. The 10 minutes that Deignan was allowed to gain on that stage moved him up from 18th up to 9th on the G.C., a position he would defend all the way to Madrid. This year, Deignan will be riding the Vuelta for the third time having also ridden and finished the race in 2007 when he took 71st overall. In fact, the Irish trio of Deignan, Roche and Martin have now ridden ten Grand Tours between them, and an each of those occasions they have all finished the race. Roche and Deignan, both a couple of years older than Martin, have both ridden four Grand Tours, but unusually this year’s Vuelta will be the first one that they have both ridden together.

The lineup for the Vuelta in general seems very strong. A large reason for this is the presence of the Schleck brothers who have announced they will be riding with the goal of overall victory for Frank. Their presence here is due to the fact that Frank crashed out of the Tour, otherwise the pair probably would not have signed up. In addition to the two Luxembourg riders, also expected on the startline on August 28th are former Grand Tour winners Carlos Sastre, who will be riding his third Grand Tour of the year, and Denis Menchov. With a former Tour winner in Sastre and the Giro and Vuelta previously won by Menchov, there will be previous winners of all three Grand Tours present in this year’s Vuelta. This has only occurred twice in the last 10 years. In 2007, Damiano Cunego (Giro 2004), Oscar Periero (Tour 2006) and Denis Menchov (Vuelta 2005) were all present, and in 2001, Marco Pantani (Tour & Giro 1998) and Roberto Heras (Vuelta 2000) were both there for the Vuelta.

There are plenty of other riders who are set to participate in this year’s race who have performed well  in the Vuelta before and will add plenty of intrigue to the fight for the overall. Egoi Martinez finished 9th in 2008 and won the King of the Mountains crown in 2006. Recent Tour stage winner Joaquim Rodriguez finished 6th in 2008 and 7th last year. Ezequiel Mosquera has finished in the top five in each of the past three years. Andrey Kashechkin will be something of unknown quantity as he returns from suspension and will ride for Lampre. He hasn’t raced since 2007 but he’s still only 30 and the last time he rode the Vuelta he won a stage on the way to finishing 3rd while helping his team mate and compatriot Alexander Vinokourov to the overall victory. There will also be the Liquigas pair of Roman Kreuziger, who has finished in the top 10 of the Tour in the past two years, and Vincenzo Nibai, podium finisher at this year’s Giro.

But it’s not all about the G.C. men. The fact that the World Road Race Circuit is considered sprinter-friendly this year means there are many speed merchants looking to hone their form at the Vuelta in the hopes of landing a rainbow jersey later on. The sprinting heavyweights Thor Hushovd, Tyler Farrar, Alessandro Petacchi, Daniele Bennati, Oscar Freire and Mark Cavendish should all be battling it out for stage wins although it remains to be seen how many will go on to complete the three weeks. Sadly, rider’s who are targetting the Worlds usually call it a day at the Vuelta before the third week. But, the fact that it is a relatively flat Worlds course, means the G.C. men should see the race out till the end. In addition, this could see the race with a distinct lack of sprinters in the final week which may leave the door open for stage hunters and some more unlikely stage winners. It’s set to be an exciting race, and fortunately for the Irish it is now the 7th Grand Tour in succession in which we’ll have a rider or two to be rooting for.