Road News and Results – August 10, 2009

The Pro Tour comes to Canada, Steegmans seeing interest from several fronts, Barloworld to end sponsorship, Valverde continues to win and more cycling news from Bike World News, your home for road racing news and results:

• Canada will get 2 Pro Tour events next year. There will be a race on September 10th in Quebec City and September 12 in Montreal. The UCI has licensed the races for five years, with a possible four year extension beyond that.
• The Columbia-HTC team has expressed interest in picking up Gert Steegmans as a man for the spring classics. The BBox Bouyges Telecom team has also shown interest in the Belgian. [In an era that is so sensitive to doping, would you sign a rider that refused to sign an anti-doping charter? I'd think twice. - Ed.]
• Barloworld, the South African sponsor of the British-registered team has said that they will terminate their sponsorship at the end of 2009. Team manager Claudio Corti is confident that he will be able to find sponsors to keep the team going, and Bianchi has already pledged to continue to supply the team with bikes.
• Danilo Di Luca‘s B-samples have come back positive for doping products as well. Di Luca had requested that the sample be tested in Vienna, expressing doubts with the validity of methods employed by France’s Chatenay-Malabry lab. He faces a four year ban if the findings are accepted, but has said that he would retire if the “B” samples from the Giro came back positive. The Italian Cycling Federation has already initiated disciplinary proceedings with the Italian National Olympic Committee.
• UCI President Patrick McQuaid is hoping that the Court of Arbitration for Sport will rule on Alejandro Valverde‘s case before the start of the Vuelta a Espana. While the matter has been tied up in appeal, Valerde has won three major tours – May’s Tour of Catalonia, the Dauphiné Libéré in June and this weekend’s Tour of Burgos.
• Caisse d’Epargne has already named seven of its nine riders for the Vuelta. Valverde will be there of course, as will Joaquim Rodríguez, Alberto Losada, Imanol Erviti, Txente García, Francisco Pérez and Daniel Moreno. Vasil Kiryienka, David López, Luis Pasamontes and Xabier Zandio are in consideration for the final two spots.
• Fuji Servetto is also working on its lineup. Juanjo Cobo, David de la Fuente, Beñat Intxausti, Fredrik Kessiakoff, Robert Kiserlovski, Eros Capecchi and Davide Vigano will definitely be racing and the remaining two spots will be selected from Jesús Del Nero, Iker Camaño, Alberto Fernández de la Puebla, Josep Jufre, Alberto Benítez and Arkaitz Durán.
• The organizers of the Tour of Burgos are asking the UCI to move the start date of the race to August 11th next year to avoid conflict with the Tour of Poland and the Tour of Portugal.
• Joaquim Rodriguez will leave the Caisse d’Epargne team after this season and has signed an agreement to move to Team Katusha. He will serve as team captain for many races on the 2010 calendar.
• Taylor Phinney was having problems after a crash in last month’s Cascade Cycling Classic. After further investigation, it was found that he had a fracture of the dorsal surface of his C5 vertebra. The break will not affect him long term, but he will need to take off some time to heal, causing him to miss the upcoming Tour of Utah.
• Frank Vandenbrouke has left the Cinelli-Down Under team, saying that he felt “used” by the team. He did not have a contract with the team and was not being paid to race. Vandenbrouke’s return has been less than stellar, so it’s not clear if he will be looking for a professional contract.
• Aurélien Clerc, Renaud Dion, Cédric Pineau, Alexandr Pliuschin, Stéphane Poulhiès, Jean-Charles Senac and Blaise Sonnery have all been released by the AG2R-La Mondiale team for 2010 and will be looking for new contracts.

Results:

• Heinrich Haussler won Wolvertem, the last of the post-Tour criteriums. Andy Schleck took second and Sergei Ivanov was third.
• Laurens Ten Dam of Rabobank won the Maarheeze criterium over Koen de Kort and Johan van Summeren.
• Tom Danielson (Garmin-Slipstream) briefly moved into the overall lead in Spain’s Tour de Burgos, after winning the 15km fourth stage time trial on Saturday, but is was Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d’Epargne) who took the overall on Sunday.
• World champion Alessandro Ballan (Lampre) won the 66th edition of the Tour of Poland on Saturday after the seventh and final stage. The 136km stage, from Rabka to Krakow, was won by Germany’s André Greipel of the Columbia-HTC squad.
• Michael Buffaz of Cofidis won the 1st stage of the Tour de l’Ain. Buffaz, who hails from the Ain region, won the sprint over his breakawy companions Rémi Cuzin (Agritubel) Floris Goesinnen (Skil-Schimano) on the 146.5 km race from Bourg-en-Bresse to Saint-Denis-les-Bourg.

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