So while I took another weekend off, another exciting Clasica San Sebastian came to a close. This year’s winner? Leonardo Bertagnolli, who, as his Wikipedia page so starkly suggests, isn’t exactly the biggest name in the sport. True, his win completed a nice comeback story, but it’s still another second-tier winner at what should be highly-sought-after race. Maybe it’s the unique nature of the parcours or its proximity to the Tour de France, but for some reason, this race hasn’t had a big name winner since Bettini in 2003.
Maybe part of San Sebastian’s problem is that a lot of non-Spanish teams don’t take it so seriously. As of last week, CSC has spent four consecutive years dominating the relatively unimportant and essentially concurrent Tour of Denmark. Don’t they realize that San Sebastian is a ProTour event and thus supremely important over all other races? That’s why the ProTour never schedules overlapping races…oh, wait…
And, I guess since it would feel really weird to write a post without talking about doping, some dude I’ve never heard of tested positive for EPO at the PanAm games. I’m always more bummed by the little guys who come up positive, because it makes me feel like everyone’s using. Though I guess in the PanAm’s small pond, this guy was a contender. Ah well. For the clean riders out there, David Millar’s shown that even without drugs, you can still have your national colors mauled by a cycling kit.
One of the perks of riding for T-Mobile: EVERY jersey looks good with those classy black shorts. Even T-Mobile’s jersey!
It’s true. I was a big fan of the retro-styled Bianchi kit when they bailed out Coast in 2003.
i don’t know if millar’s jersey can be as bad as brad huff’s crit national championship/slipstream jersey. (rider on the right in the picture)
https://www.cyclingnews.com/photos.php?id=/photos/2007/aug07/presbyterian07/presby_156
As if cycling needed an aesthetic crisis (this means you too, Gerolsteiner and FDJ) on top of all the drugs and organization in-fighting.