Astana Cycling Team

The Tour Down Under, by Josep Jufré Pou: My data on the SRM in the queen stage - biciciclismo.com

Queen stage of the Tour Down Under. Don’t think that this means summit after summit, because here in Adelaide there aren’t any mountains, but for years there’s been this stage and it’s quite true that it’s the Queen since it gets very fast and there are always lots of attacks in the final part.

The stage consisted of two laps of a circuit near the beach and two more laps of a 25-km circuit with a 3-km climb called Old Willunga Hill. In the cycling community we call this “the Willunga stage”. It passes over the ascent of Willunga twice and the second time happens just short of 19 kilometers from the finish. We find that just after the banner at the summit, there are six kilometers of flats, nothing else to climb, which makes it harder since there’s no rest; on the contrary, it goes straight and at 1,000/hr. Once the flats are over, you start to go down, definitely a very fast descent, and in the end we have a final five kilometers of flat on average, with slight ascent, which, by the way, really take hold of you. Read the rest of this entry →

The Tour Down Under, by Josep Jufré Pou - biciciclismo.com

Stage 4: Menu du jour

Today we had the following “Menu of the day.” To prepare it, we used the following ingredients:

Ingredients for the stage:

-          Variable route: tough challenging terrain at first and flat at the end.

-          Nice temperatures of 32 – 36°.

-          Not much wind at the start, and very strong in the final kilometers.

-          Peloton with attacks in the beginning and tension with fans at the finish.

Preparation and development were as follows: Read the rest of this entry →

Astana Cycling Team - Official Presentation

Vienna on the 30st of January 2010

The Astana cycling team is preparing for its 4th season among the elite of world cycling.

Since 2007, the training in the national colors of Kazakhstan has won the biggest races on the international calendar, including the 3 Grand Tours: the Giro d'Italia, the Vuelta and the Tour de France thanks to Alberto Contador. The Spanish champion will be associated this year to Alexandre Vinokourov the great Kazakh cycling star and to Oscar Pereiro former winner of the Tour de France. The major objective of this new season is bringing a new yellow jersey in Paris next July. Read the rest of this entry →

www.biciciclismo.com

Josep Jufré: Too darn hot!

It is hot! Today we spent the day in the heat. It lived up to the forecast and reached at least 40° in the shade, since the clock that we took on the bike (SRM) got to the 47° mark. Impressive!

Today we had 10 neutralized kilometers, which gave us a chance to warm up the engines, as if they weren’t already pretty hot, and I say that because we had a very fast start with a lot of attacks. I tried to get into one of them, since groups of more than five riders were forming, but with no luck, we were constantly slogging down a divided highway that seemed like it would go on forever. At the end of the climb, our teammate Grivko got into an escape, which gave him a good chance to grab a bonus second and 8^th place in the general classification, but the peloton wouldn’t allow it.

The big escape didn’t get away until after an hour of racing. It was a bit scary, too, due to the wind, so there was a little tension that translated into a pretty good tempo in the race. We climbed a short ascent, the group fell apart, although later it got back together. In the final part, Caisse were controlling things for Alejandro in a circuit with more than 20 kilometers that was also pretty tough, and the last five kilometers with climbs that were short but very hard, as well. Read the rest of this entry →

Jufré , TDU Stage 2

biciciclismo.com

The Tour Down Under: Travel, hotel and transport

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Today I’m going to tell you a little about how things are organized so that they’re able to make it convenient for everybody and so that everything goes well, since the race was very similar to yesterday, Greipel even won again.

So, the first job that the organization has is travel. What’s the first problem that they run into? Being able to reserve the necessary seats, since here in Australia it’s summer, and that means vacations. Besides, we riders and and directors practically all flew from Europe and in first class. That means that in each flight there are fewer seats. Unfortunately, for the support staff, since it’s a ProTour race, the organization stopped putting them in first class and now they’re traveling in tourist. Anyway, they were already starting to reserve tickets in the month of August. There are usually three or four teams per flight. We make up 17 ProTour teams, and in consequence, it takes four or five days for us all to arrive and they have to plan on another five for us to be able to depart. Read the rest of this entry →

Alberto Contador’s Press Conference

"The team is responding in an incredible way"

Alberto Contador has offered today a Press Conference at the Calpe stage hotel in which he has been very pleased with his progress and that of his companions after the first trainings of the year. Contador will stay in Calpe until next Sunday and begin to compete on 17 February at the Tour of Algarve.

How are you feeling at this stage and how do you see the Astana team?

I'm very happy with the work we are doing here. We're riding about 160 or 170 km on average and the team is responding in an incredible way. There is a difference in attitude from last year in riders who were on the team, with the Kazakhs much more involved and they shows also that have improved their level. As for me, I'm very good sensations. I still have to tune a little more, but data are still very good.

Are there differences between the stage of Pisa and now?

Yes, I have noticed much difference, but not in motivation. What I wanted was to see the team in hard training and we have done some of over 200 km and still were riders who have done more. Every day I become more convinced that we will have a great team in the Tour. Read the rest of this entry →

Josep Jufré, Tour Down Under diary from Biciciclismo

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Hello, everybody,

Author - Guido Bontempi

First stage of the Tour Down Under and first ProTour race of the year 2010. Then the first crash of the year. Yes, yes, the very beginning, and when we’d covered a few meters of the route, there was a big pile-up. I hit the ground when we were practically already stopped. It was only a whack on the backside, nothing more; but I saw some ripped shorts. Luckily it seemed to me that there were no serious consequences for anybody.

But let me start from the beginning: Today there was a pretty long transfer to get to the start line, but when we got to Clare (the start town), there were so many people expecting us that it much more than made up for the transfer. We’re delighted with the Australians, they treat us with a lot of respect. Read the rest of this entry →

Monday, January 18, 2010

Hello everybody,

What a good day!

Today I slept better than I have so far, I got up at 8:30 when my body had gotten all the rest it wanted, we had a leisurely breakfast and trained a little to strech our legs on the bike for an hour and a half. We left the hotel, and to tell the truth, it was good to get a little fresh air, it was only 23 ° but it was warming up little by little and we finally got to 35°. A good temperature here in Adelaide, since it’s a very dry heat.

As I said, most of the team went out at 10:00 am. We did a circuit and met back up at the beach in Glenelg, and just as we had previously seen them playing some beach volleyball games, we saw a beach volleyball championship and then we had a good capucchino on one of the terraces. Read the rest of this entry →