Lance Armstrong confirms George Hincapie for The Shack + more cycling news

August 14th, 2009 by Al Fresco View Comments

Updated: I (and many others) mistook Lance’s comments to mean that Hincapie was committed to Lance’s new team. In reality, he was already committed to another team.

George Hincapie returns to support Lance Armstrong, big changes at Columbia and Saxo Bank, Oscar Pereiro and Marcus Zberg considering retirement, Boonen’s back for Vattenfall and more…

You can’t pick them all…. Lance Armstrong confirmed yesterday that George Hincapie will ride for Radio Shack Cycling next year. I didn’t even pick Hincapie as a possibility when I handicapped possible team members, thinking that he had a pretty plum ride going with Columbia. Hincapie supported Armstrong in all of his seven Tour de France victories. At age 36, he has to be thinking about retirement, but maybe the lure of helping Lance to another Tour victory was attractive.
Both Caisse d’Epargne and Quick Step have expressed interest in Alberto Contador. Eusebio Unzué, DS for Caisse d’Epargne, has said that the team is looking for a co-sponsor that would be able to front the money to buy Contador out of his contract with Astana. Quick Step, on the other hand, seems to be confident that they can meet the financial and material requirements to get the Tour de France winner, and have already had discussions with Contador’s brother, who serves as his manager.
20 year old Danish cyclist Rasmus Guldhammer will join the Columbia-HTC squad for 2010 for a two-year contract. 2010 is expected to be a learning year for him.
Belarussian Konstantin Siutsou, who won a stage at the Tour of Italy this year, has extended with columbia-HTC for two years.
29-year-old Dane Lars Bak is expected to leave Saxo Bank for Columbia-HTC. He wants to be able to race at the Tour de France. Columbia has not confirmed the move.
Jurgen van Gool has also expressed displeasure with Saxo Bank and has instructed his manager to look for a new team. Despite finishing 16th at last year’s Vuelta, he was left out of the race this year. Van Gool came to Saxo Bank from Discovery Channel in 2007, so he might be a good candidate for Radio Shack.
2006 Tour de France winner Oscar Pereiro continues to suffer from a lack of motivation and is looking very strongly at retirement. His contract with Caisse d’Epargne is up at the end of this season.
Markus Zberg (BMC Racing) announced his retirement. The 35 year had a heavy fall at the Tour de l’Ain and decided to end his career after 14 years as a pro.
South African Robbie Hunter will move from Barloworld to the Garmin team for 2010. Barloworld team management recently announced that Barloworld was ending their sponsorship of the squad.
Martin Mortensen extended with the Vacansoleil through the end of 2010.
Alessandro Ballan (Lampre) is back to his winning ways and is one of the favorites for this weekend’s Vattenfall Cyclassics in Hamburg.
Milram will send Gerald Ciolek, Markus Fothen, Johannes Fröhlinger, Christian Knees, Niki Terpstra, Martin velit, Markus Eichler and Peter Wrolich to Hamburg in search of a win. The team has six Tour de France stage wins amongst them, but does not include Fabian Wegmann, who is experiencing back problems.
Tom Boonen will be lining up in Hamburg as well. He is said to be fully recovered from the gastroenteritis that plagued him during the Tour de France and the post-Tour crits. He’ll be supported by Sylvain Chavanel, Allan Davis, Addy Engels, Mauro Facci, Francesco Reda, Marco Velo and Maarten Wynants.
Alexander Vinokourov is on Astana’s reserve list for the Vuelta, seemingly indicating that the issues keeping him from returning to the team have been dealt with.
Skil-Shimano’s Piet Rooijakkers cycled on the road again for the first time this week. He broke his left forearm in several places and tore a tendon in his right hand during the Tour de France. His right hand has been in a cast, but that will be removed today.
We noted a couple of days ago that Jens Voigt is recovering well. He hopes to make his comeback at the Tour of Missouri, where Saxo Bank is one of the featured teams.
Bernhard Kohl and his manager Stefan Matschiner have confessed to bribing WADA-accredited doping laboratories to “modify” results and to get information on dosing levels for EPO that would avoid detection. Kohl said that Matschiner paid between 150 and 500 euros a time to laboratory employees for the testing of samples so that his athletes could avoid being caught by anti-doping tests.
Team Type 1 has had a very successful August, with five podium finishes in criteriums in the past 10 days. The team is looking for a victory at this weekend’s Downer’s Grove criterium. Aldo Ino Ilesic will lead the team and will be supported by Team Type 1 co-founder Joe Eldridge, one of four riders on the team who has Type 1 diabetes. Rounding out the six-man roster will be Michael Creed, Ken Hanson, Daniel Holt and Valeriy Kobzarenko.

Results:

Danilo Hondo won Thursday’s seventh stage in the Tour of Portugal.
Columbia-HTC’s Kim Anderson has taken the first lead of her career in the Route de France stage race. Anderson succeeded teammate Ina-Yoko Teutenberg as overall leader of the six-day race after forming part of a 10-rider break that gained 28 minutes on the bunch.
Evelyn Stevens pulled off her first major European road stage race victory with a win in stage four of La Route de France. Riding for the USA Cycling Women’s National Team, Stevens out sprinted fellow American Kim Anderson to take the stage win and second place in the general classification.