Daily Cycling Facts 06.12.11

Contador, 29 today
(image credit: VirtKitty CC BY-SA 2.0) 

Alberto Contador
Happy birthday to "El Pistolero," Alberto Contador, who has won three Tours de France, two Giros d'Italia, one Vuelta a Espana, a host of Grand Tour jerseys other than the overall winner jersey, Vuelta a Castilla y León, Volta ao Algarve, Paris-Nice and most of the other races you can think of. He was born in Pinto, Spain in 1982.

Contador, widely considered the best climber in the world today (as a junior, he was nicknamed Pantani - not a name that cyclists bandy about without really meaning it) and is only the fifth man to have won all three Grand Tours. He married his long-term girlfriend Macarena in November 2011 and we wish him all the best in the investigation into his alleged positive test for doping. Many fans don't like Contador, but as far as we're concerned if you love cycling, you should love him too - to see him climb is one of the most beautiful sights in the sport. Unusually for a climbing specialist, he is also devastatingly fast in the time trials - a combination that makes him such a hard opponent to beat in a stage race.

Yet, Contador's career almost never happened: in 2004, his second professional year, the Spanish rider had been ill with headaches for several days prior to the Vuelta a Asturias. Then, just 40km into Stage 1, he suffered convulsions and collapsed. Medical investigation revealed cavernous angioma, a disorder in which blood vessels (usually within the brain, but other organs can be affected) become filled with stagnant blood. He required a dangerous operation which left a scar that can sometimes be seen when he takes off his helmet after a sweaty stage, running from one ear right over his head to the other. He resumed training as soon as he was able to do so, and eight months later won Stage 5 at the 2005 Tour Down Under. The following year, he crashed while riding to the team bus after a stage at the Vuelta a Burgos and was rendered unconscious - due to his medical history, he was rushed to hospital and given a CAT scan but no link was found.

Like many other cyclists at his level, Contador's career has been affected by doping allegations. The first came in 2006 when his ONCE-Liberty Seguros team was prevented from starting the Tour de France after several riders - himself included - were implicated in Operación Puerto. He was cleared, and returned in in time for the Vuelta a Burgos at which he crashed as outlined above. He was briefly without a team after that season came to a close until being signed up by Discovery in January 2007; returning the favour with a superb win at Paris-Nice, a textbook example of team tactics in which his domestiques continually worked on their leader's rivals and ground away at them until nobody had the energy to prevent him taking the race. During the same year at the Tour de France, race leader Michael Rasmussen was disqualified after it was shown that he had misled the team during a three-week period prior to the race, making himself unavailable to anti-doping officials. That left Contador in the lead - for once, anti-doping efforts worked in his favour.

In 2008, he was unable to take part in the Tour for a second time, again due to his team: Astana were not permitted to ride due to widespread doping in the past, despite the fact that most of the management and riders had been recruited in the time since the incidents in question. However, the team received an invitation to participate in the Giro d'Italia one week before the race was due to start and, despite a serious lack of training (he was sunbathing on a beach at home in Spain when he was informed) Contador won, the first foreign rider to have done so for twelve years - but earned a place in the hearts of Italian fans when he told them that winning their beloved Grand Tour "was a really big achievement, bigger than if I'd had a second victory in the Tour de France." Later in the year, he also raced in the Vuelta a Espana which that year included an ascent of the legendary Alto de l'Angliru, the steepest mountain in any Grand Tour. All the teams had sent strong climbers to be in with a chance of surviving the stage, which meant that while Contador was first up the mountain - and won the leader's jersey - he didn't win the sort of advantage he would have done over lesser men. However, few other riders in history have been capable of keeping the pace high through the subsequent flat stages and time trial like Contador could. He won, becoming the fifth rider to have won all three Grand Tours during their career (the others are Anquetil, Gimondi, Merckx and Hinault).

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In 2009, the media learned that Lance Armstrong was to return from retirement solely in order to compete in another Tour and printed stories ranging from the feasible to the lurid claiming that a row had broken out between the riders over who would lead the team. Contador has since explained that he simply wanted an assurance that he would lead, denying that the row was anything like the feud described by some journalists. In the event, manager Johan Bruyneel was clever enough to see through the Armstrong legend and understand that the Texan's best years were in the past, leaving Contador in the top position. His faith paid off: Contador won with an advantage of more than four minutes over second place Andy Schleck (after some superb duels in the mountains) and almost five and half over Armstrong in third place. Unfortunately, a genuine feud broke out after the race when Contador said of Armstrong, "I have never admired him and never will" - an opinion in which he is not alone, numerous riders having expressed their belief that Armstrong affected the Tour and professional cycling negatively despite the armies of new fans he brought. Armstrong replied by saying that "a champion is also measured on how much he respects his teammates and opponents," which even his most ardent supporters will accept is a bit rich coming from a man who has completely ostracised others when he's suspected them of not having his best interests at heart or, in his terminology, being a troll.

2010 brought a strong start to the season, leaving Contador as favourite for the Tour. However, there were those who had taken note of Andy Schleck's increasing strength and wondered if it might be his year instead. Then - Stage 15 and Chaingate, as the incident when Schleck's chain came off on a steep climb and Contador didn't wait for him has become known. It was not, as Contador's detractors - and there are many - claimed a mere example of bad sportsmanship, though. Schleck had himself failed to wait when Contador was caught up in a crash during Stage 3, leading many to wonder if the close friendship between the two riders had fallen by the wayside, like so many riders a victim of the pursuit for Tour de France victory. Schleck fixed his bike and rode hard, but out on his own on the mountain he was unable to catch up. Contador won the stage by 39 seconds - the exact time by which he later won the overall General Classification. The fall-out was ugly - he faced an angry crowd that booed him as he donned the yellow jersey at the end of the stage. Schleck too was  upset, stating his opinion that the Spaniard had acted unsportingly, but Contador issued an apology hours later. The two riders have since patched up their differences and are once again friends.

Contador's apology to Schleck

In Sepetember 2010, after the Tour was over, Contador revealed to the world that a sample he had provided during a rest day between Stages 16 and 17, had subsequently tested positive for the banned bronchodilator Clenbuterol but claimed he had no idea how the drug had got into his system. Later, he said that he thought it might have been from eating contaminated beef - though its use in cattle feed is illegal in the European Union, it is known to be used by farmers as it promotes the growth of lean meat which fetches a higher price than fatty meat. This explanation was considered plausible by doctors and several experts said that as the drug's effects on athletic performance are negligible, they could see no reason that the rider would have deliberately used it. The miniscule amount that was found in the sample also seems to support the theory. However, use of Clenbuterol in Spain is exceedingly rare - tests carried out in 2008 and 2009 on more than 19,000 samples taken from Spanish cattle showed no evidence at all that it was being used while a Europe-wide testing programme involving more than 83,000 samples during the same period recorded just one positive result. There was also the unfortunate discovery of plastic residue in the rider's blood - an indication that he might have received a transfusion of stored blood, either his own or form someone else, as is carried out by cyclists and other athletes to boost their red blood cell levels. However, the test process that discovered the residue is not approved by the World Anti-Doping Authority and as such its findings can not be used as evidence.

As already stated, the amount of Clenbuterol discovered in Contador's positive sample was minute, some 40 times lower than the amount that would result in an automatic ban (not, as earlier reports claimed, 400 times lower) - an amount that at least one doctor has stated was 180 times lower than the rider would have needed to gain any sort of increase in performance whatsoever. Nevertheless, in these post-Festina Affair/Operación Puerto times, professional cycling is in no doubt that it cannot afford any more major scandals if it is to retain any sort of credibility and authorities have had to come down hard on offending riders to save face and leave nobody in doubt that their intention is to stamp out doping once and for all - thus, Contador was handed a provisional suspension pending further investigation; though this had little effect on him as his season had already ended.

Contador's scar from brain surgery can
still be seen
(image credit: GoldenBembel CC BY 2.0)

In January 2011, the Spanish Cycling Federation announced it intended to ban him from racing for a year; but later accepted his explanation and upheld his appeal, clearing him of all charges and freeing him to return to competition in time for the Volta a Algarve. He also took part in the Tour de France, earning himself new fans and the respect of many riders by retaining his dignity at the Tour Presentation when crowd hurled abuse at him and again during the race with a superb mountain attack on the Col du Télégraphe and Galibier in Stage 19; later saying that he had attacked for his own amusement. Yet despite good physical form and some excellent days, Contador rode differently in that Tour. It looked as though part of him was broken, a spark had been suffocated by the sheer weight of the  doping allegations and investigation. It wasn't a pleasant thing to watch. His case was due to be heard by the Court for Arbitration in Sport in June 2011, but was delayed until August after the Tour. It was then delayed again until November and at the time of writing is ongoing.

Whatever one thinks of Contador, it seems very likely that had be not have been prevented from taking part in two Tours and without the stress he had to bear in 2011, there's a very real possibility that he might have won five by now. SaxoBank-Sungard manager Bjarne Riis has continued to support the rider, stating that he believes Contador is capable of winning all three Grand Tours in a single year - something that no other rider has ever achieved and which would be seen by many as a greater accomplishment than the Triple Crown (two Grand Tours and a World Championship). Now aged 29, there's a chance that he might still do that.

Charly Gaul

Charly Gaul, 1932-2005

It's been six years since the death of "The Angel of the Mountains," the great Charly Gaul, a rider known for breaking away from the peloton to climb the steepest mountains of the Tour de France and Giro d'Italia alone and, as such, a spiritual ancestor of Contador. Gaul was National Road Champion of Luxembourg six times and National Cyclo Cross Champion twice. He won the Giro twice (1956 and 1959), also winning the King of the Mountains classification on each occasion and the Tour de France in 1958, in addition to the Tour King of the Mountains in 1955 and 1956. He was also the man who first invented the fine art of urinating on the move, developing it after another rider attacked during a peloton comfort break.

Despite enormous popularity among fans, Gaul rarely spoke and could be surly - after retirement, he became a virtual recluse and lived in a forest hut for many years (that he remembered little of his success raises the possibility that he may have suffered a serious mental illness, perhaps severe depression) until he met his third wife in 1983 and made his first public appearance since retirement at the 1989 Tour. He died two days before his 73rd birthday.

Rachel Atherton
(image credit: Black Country Biker)

Gaul was very good at riding up mountains, a rider who is very good at riding down them is Rachel Atherton who was born on this day in 1987. Atherton began riding BMX when she was eight, then moved on to mountain bikes when she was eleven. Seven years later, she was selected as The Times Sportswoman of the Year after becoming British, European and World Junior Downhill Champion. She then added numerous wins to her palmares before becoming the first British woman to win the World Downhill Championships at Elite level in 2008.

Paul Crake is an Australian professional cyclist who was born in Canberra on this day in 1976. He is also a five-time winner of the Empire State Building Run-up and in 2003 became the first person to make it up the 1,576 steps in less than 10 minutes.

Leandro Faggin, a gold medalist at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, died in Padua on this day in 1970, the city in which he was born, aged just 37.

Other births: Marat Ganayev (USSR, 1964); Stéphane Augé (France, 1974); Raino Koskenkorva (Finland, 1926); Félix Suárez (Spain, 1950); Luisa Seghezzi (Italy, 1965); Hugo Miranda (Chile, 1925); Guglielmo Malatesta (Italy, 1891, died 1920).