Discovery team turns to Basso
It begins today. Extreme Makeover Discovery Channel season.
The top United States-based cycling team is rebuilding around talented but tarnished Italian rider Ivan Basso and is looking for a new title sponsor after the cable television company Discovery Channel announced last week it would not renew its contract with the team after this season.
As the second Amgen Tour of California professional cycling race -- a 650-mile, eight-stage trip from San Francisco to Long Beach -- begins today with a time trial that ends at iconic CoitTower, it will be without defending champion Floyd Landis.
Landis was the Californian who thrilled the cycling world last summer with his brave win at the Tour de France then disappointed much of the same world when he was accused of illegal doping.
Landis’ former team, Phonak, was supposed to have a new, San Francisco-based sponsor this year. Instead it is gone, disappeared when the new sponsor withdrew its support in the face of the Landis accusations.
And all the beauty, angst and controversy that have marked cycling over the last several months can be seen up close with Discovery. After Lance Armstrong’s retirement in 2005, team technical director Johan Bruyneel tinkered with, but didn’t overhaul, Discovery’s personnel.
After Discovery failed to place a rider in the top 10 at the 2006 Tour, the team, managed by the Armstrong-owned Tailwind Sports, made the two splashiest off-season acquisitions -- Basso and American Levi Leipheimer. But without a sponsor willing to commit to spending more than $15 million a year, star power won’t matter.
The signing by Discovery of Basso, runner-up to Armstrong in the 2005 Tour de France, came after he had been suspended from the 2006 race along with eight other riders when his name was linked to a Spanish doping investigation.
Later in the year the Italian cycling federation cleared Basso and no charges have been forthcoming. Still Basso’s old team, the Danish-based CSC, did not offer Basso a new contract.
Bobby Julich, a well-respected American rider who was a mentor to Basso on CSC, said it would be “strange” to race against Basso.
“I do respect Ivan as a person, a cyclist, a father,” Julich said. “About the doping, nothing was ever decided so it’s just hard for me to form an opinion. I can’t say whether I would have signed him on my team or whether Discovery should have. I just don’t know.”
The signing of Basso, though, puzzled some Discovery Channel riders.
Leipheimer, a Tour de France contender for the past three seasons, signed on with Discovery last summer, assuming he would be the team leader.
“I was a little disappointed they had signed Basso,” Leipheimer said. “I understand in a way why a team would want to sign a rider who’s the biggest favorite of all to win the Tour de France, but without a doubt the questions about Ivan remain.”
George Hincapie, who won a Tour de France stage two years ago and is the only remaining Discovery rider who was an Armstrong teammate, said he found the recruitment and signing of Basso unexpected.
“I was a little surprised,” Hincapie said. “I guess all I’ll say is that I have a lot of confidence in Johan.”
Bill Stapleton, team general manager and Armstrong’s agent and founder of Tailwind Sports, said he was confident Discovery won’t go the way of Phonak.
“It has not been the best six months in cycling’s history,” Stapleton said Friday. “I start the conversation with potential sponsors by saying doping isn’t an issue, and that they get to write whatever language about termination into the contract.”
Bruyneel said that Basso will ride in support of Leipheimer, Hincapie and American Tom Danielson at the Tour of California. Besides Julich, CSC features another rising American star, Dave Zabriskie.
Ed Beamon is the Navigators Insurance team manager. Navigators has sponsored a cycling team for 14 years, the longest running deal in U.S. cycling history.
Beamon said he has no doubt, scandal aside, that Stapleton will find a new sponsor.
“The media impact of that one month of the Tour de France alone overshadows what any other international sport can deliver in terms of global market penetration,” he said. “Professional cyclists don’t get paid as a rule what professional football, basketball and soccer players get. You get a better value in terms of the cost of operations.”
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A New York Times story suggested that the Tour of California made a mistake last year by not testing for erythropoietin or EPO, a genetically engineered blood booster developed to aid cancer and anemia patients.
Sean Petty, chief operating officer of USA Cycling, said that EPO testing is not part of the normal drug screening process for professional cycling races and that no U.S. races have routinely tested for EPO. AEG, which runs the Tour of California, and Amgen, the title sponsor and the company that produces EPO, have requested the EPO test be part of the daily screening process this year. After each of the eight stages the stage winner, the overall leader and two random riders will undergo drug testing.
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