Pro Cycling News – T-Mobile in Alps, Jan to Giro?

Most team training camps in the Alps involve reconnaissance on the big Alpine passes of the Tour. Not so for T-Mobile, who, perhaps realizing that heavy snowfall would foil any cycling plans this time of year, engaged in a military style team-building exercise. Once entirely the domain of overpaid business executives with an unhealthy fixation on The Art of War, these camps were brought into vogue by Bjarne Riis a few years ago, and the results of his CSC team seem to be a rousing endorsement of their effectiveness. Don’t worry, folks, I won’t call this plagiarism (see my rant from earlier this week); T-Mobile’s recieved more than enough flak for stealing things from CSC already this season. Anyway, after watching Ullrich and Kloeden chase Vino down repeatedly in this year’s TdF, I can’t name a single squad more in need of team-building than T-Mobile.

Speaking of Big Jan, apparently he told Kurier, an Austrian newspaper, that he would be doing next year’s Giro, in addition to the Tours of France and Germany. Of course, as I do not speak German, nor live within the circulation range of any Austrian newspapers, I have only this forum post to go off of. But the folks at Cyclingheros are fairly reliable, and Germanophones at that. This leaves Ullrich with a (snicker) very full plate for 2006. If that isn’t funny to you, maybe this photo (there’s another good one here if you scroll down) and this article will help you out. For you history buffs, Jan also raced the Giro as Tour prep in 2001. It didn’t help, as Armstrong still managed to put a fat 6’44” on the hapless Rostockian, and rubbed it in with “The Look”.

Other than that, it’s mostly just tidbits. A high-end part got a long and favorable review from Pez. What a suprise. I can’t decide if it’s suspicious or not that every bit of kit they test gets a great review, seeing as it is, without exception, really high-end stuff. If you were unclear on how Tyler Hamilton got on the UCI’s “suspect list,” Cyclingnews has your back with this feature. Much like Hamilton, Roberto Heras claims here that he will do whatever it takes to clear his name, if that recently opened B-sample comes back positive. And San Francisco itself strikes back against Threshold Sports for saying city politics killed the SF Gran Prix.