During the Tour de France I made statements as to why Alberto Contador was basically going to win the Tour without any real threats from the other contenders. I also made statements about how he'd win every Tour de France he raced in the future. (Both of these, as all statements regarding cycling wins come with the un-spoken condition that he doesn't lose because of a crash.) However, since the Tour de France the cycling news has been buzzing with the Lance vs. Alberto soap opera as well as the guesses as to where Alberto will end up. Here's my take.
On the Astana Camp:
Alberto doesn't want to ride for Astana anymore, and why would he? Vino's coming back and everybody knows Vino has too big of an ego to work for anyone. He's already made public statements about coming back as the team boss and now his statements of riding as a super domestique for Contador can hardly be trusted. Besides, with Lance and Johan both leaving for the new RadioShack team, the powerhouse that was Astana is now going to be a bunch of obligated Kazak's who can't get jobs anywhere else, a few loyal spanish guys and a reigning TdF champ. He's got to get out of town!
RadioShack is going to pull with it all the internal parts that have made every USPS, Discovery Channel and Astana team so strong. Everybody that is in the infastructure of that team is 100% loyal to Johan Bruynel. This is evidenced by their moving where he moves. If your job in pro cycling is to work behind the scenes and do really important stuff and get no credit for it, it's probably easier to do these jobs for a team that is going to continually win big races. I'm sure the guys at Silence-Lotto like their jobs less than the current crew at Astana. So these guys can go with a proven producer of champions or they can stay with a team that apparently has a tough time making pay roll. Easy choice!
Not only will all of the staff follow Johan but the majority of the young talent will as well. Why would Jani Brakovich (sp?), a future stage race contender, stay to ride in support of Alberto Contador for pretty much his entire career when he could go with Lance (who loves him) to RadioShack and be molded into a future contender? That choice seems obvious and he's just one of the few young riders who would be foolish (in my opinion) to stay with Alberto. Obviously the Americans are going, Levi and Chris Horner, as they have no love for Alberto anyway. That's three of the strongest guys in the pro peloton guaranteed to split town.
The question mark is Andreas Kloden. Clearly Kloden is no longer a real contender to win a big stage race, however, he's still one of the best guys in the business and anybody would be lucky to have them as a super support rider. I imagine that Kloden feels this way also and realizes where his value lies. I also think he's got to be at least a little bitter that Alberto dropped him off the podium when he didn't need to. (Whether Alberto did this on purpose or not, I don't think he did, doesn't matter.) It's hard to get a real read on Kloden since the last time he spoke to any media was, well, never. I'm not even sure he speaks. My assumption is that Kloden has no love for Alberto either.
Let's assume that Alberto can get out of his contract, which I'm sure will, where should he go?
Unfortunately for Alberto professional cycling is not professional baseball or soccer. He can probably demand the highest figure in cycling and that'd be around $4m Euro's a year. That ain't A-Rod money by any means. But, what that also means is that if Alberto does demand a salary of that magnitude the riders that he gets surrounded by are going to be lower level riders who the teams can afford to pay less, or, young riders without much experience to support him in these big races. I think he's found himself between a rock and a hard place so speak. He demands what he's worth and he gets paid but greatly reduces his chances of being surrounded by top level domestiques or he takes a pay cut and gambles on prize money instead of gauranteed salary.
There's really only two teams out there that show much interest and that's probably a factor of being the only two teams that can really afford him. (Columbia HTC is the exception. They can certainly afford him but don't seem to care at all about adding his ego to their team.) These two teams, Garmin-Slipstream and Caisse d'Epargne.
The case of Garmin:
This is the option that makes both the most sense and the least sense for Alberto. Weird huh? It makes the most sense because we saw in this year's tour, if they have another Team Time Trial without time limits on losses, your team can force you out of contention, ie., Cadel Evans and Carlos Sastre. The reason Alberto ran away with this tour was because his team was made of really exceptional time trialist. The team they beat, Garmin-Slipstream. For this reason alone it makes sense for Alberto to be in argyle next year. However, that's also the exact reason it doesn't. Two main compenents in Garmin's ability to ride the TTT so well, Bradley Wiggins and Christian Van deVelde (sp?). Wiggins was clearly the surprise of the tour and has made public statements that he's 100% focused on coming back to win it. The question there is will he be on the new Sky team out of Britian who's main goal is to have British TdF champ in five years? If so, then that opens a big spot for Alberto. Even if Wiggins jump ship for Sky that still leaves VdV who fills that ever so important role for Garmin of being an American leader on an American team. Will this be a factor? I don't know, but VdV has certainly done a lot for Garmin has he's immensly popular in America and since everybody in America seems to have a huge crush on Lance, they seem to be less and less enchanted by the fake gun totting Mr. Contador. While this makes sense or not doesn't matter. I think Garmin would need to take this into consideration. I also don't see Vaughters forcing VdV into the domestique role as it seems he's also banked a lot of personal interest in showing the world that he's a real contender.
Caisse d'Epargne is the most likely fit for Alberto, however, that was until the most recent reports that Astraloza may have set off a bomb in the world of spanish cycling. Astraloza, as you may or may not know, won a stage in this year's tour and then tested positive out of competition after the tour. Due to this it's rumored that a bunch of Spanish teams (like the German teams last year) are no weary about having their names tied to doping in the sport. If all the Spanish teams pull out there is one small factor that could keep Caisse d'Epargne active, they're actually sponsored by the biggest bank in France. It's never made sense to me that a French bank sponsors a Spanish team, but maybe that's because I'm American and civil diplomacy isn't what we specialize in.
If Caisse d'Epargne is around this makes the most sense for Alberto. There were rumors in this tour that a lot of those guys had said they'd support him if Astana didn't. I don't know if that's true, but cycling does have a tendency to allow nationality to effect the racing. A lot of people think this is a bad choice because of Alejandro Valverde. I actually don't think it matters at all. In my opinion Valverde is not going to be a real TdF contender. He's never shown he can ride that race well. I think he's much more suited for the hilly classics and would be better off if he'd focus on those. He's certainly a huge talent, but time trials like I do, slow, and that just isn't going to cut it if you want to wear a yellow tshirt in Paris.
I think the bigger problem for Alberto and Caisse d'Epargne is Luis Leon Sanchez, who already beat Alberto this past year at Milan-San Remo. Certainly Sanchez isn't a real TdF contender, but I'm sure he's willing to put all those years of establishing himself to work for Alberto. I could be wrong here as I don't know much about Sanchez. But, I do know a lot about professional athletes and egos. My assumption here is that if Contador signs with Caisse d'Epargne, Sanchez opts out of his contract, and Contador is left with the guys who couldn't support Sanchez in the mountains.
The Tour de France is absolutely won by the efforts of your team. This year, was sort of a freakish year where Alberto was absolutely dependent on the team to help establish a margin over his rivals in the TTT. After that effort, he really didn't need them because there weren't enough contenders left to continually attack him. (Explaning this if you don't understand cycling tactics would take another post in itself. If you're interested I'll write it. ) He was the strongest man so all he really had to do was follow wheels, whether they were the wheels of team mates or not and then drop everybody on the climb. He is so brilliant in the mountains I'm sure he can use this tactic every year as long as he has at least teammate (often Armstrong only needed 1) on the last climb to set up the launch.
However, the question will be the Team Time Trial. Contador can't pull his entire team along to keep a bunch of mediocre time trialers closer. Cadel tried to do this and miserably failed. Luckily for Alberto the Team Time Trial doesn't show up in every edition of the Tour, though, I think it should.
These will all be factors in the decisions that teams and Alberto make in the next few months until we find out where he ends up. During the Tour I was as much of an Alberto fan as you could be and defended him to all the love struck Armstrong fans blinded by their nastaglia. However, I'm such a fan of guys going out and publicly bashing their teammates who rode for them during the race. I think Contador may be setting himself up to be one of those really strong grand tour riders who ends up on teams that just can't help him win.
