Major restructuring of team Saxo Bank
Time-trial champion Fabian Cancellara, the first cyclist to wear the yellow jersey at the 2010 Tour de France, is one of the few cyclists to stay with team Saxo Bank after the season, but is openly frustrated about the major line-up changes happening in the team.
"I still have a contract, so I probably will not switch teams,” he told Radsport. “There are many changes happening at the moment, and officially everything is not yet known.”
Cancellara has suggested that everything he knows about the changes to the team were learned from the media, rather than the team owner and manager Bjarne Riis. The departure of two-time Tour de France runner-up Andy Schleck and his brother Frank as team leaders is the biggest change, taking with them long-time supporters Jens Voight and Stuart O’Grady. While the brothers are developing a new Luxembourg-based team, three-time Tour winner Alberto Contador has been signed on to replace them.
Meanwhile, Cancellara is targeting a fourth time-trial victory at the World Championships, and will be competing in the Vuelta a Espana as a build-up.
“I need to do that to return to top form,” he said. “My season is already exceptional. I should have already put it to an end, because with this spring and summer, I have already filled my bags.”
Saxo Bank rider Jakob Fuglsang took his third consecutive win of the Tour of Denmark last week after supporting Andy Schleck in the Tour, but has expressed frustration that his goals are not the same as those of his team. He rode the Vuelta last year, but chose the Tour instead this year, only to find there were much less races for him than he’d like in the post-Tour season.
“I can of course fully understand that the team has to follow the plans that have been decided,” he told Politiken. “Yet from now until the season ends at the Giro di Lombardia on October 16th, I have just seven days of racing. The worst thing is that they all have very large spaces between them. I must wait until September 10th and 12th in Canada for my first competition, where I’m riding two new ProTour races. Then I go for about a month before I have five starts in Italy.”
Fuglsang confirmed his departure from team Saxo Bank, but has not announced if he has signed with a new team yet. Rumours have persisted, springing from Fuglsang’s vocal criticism of Riis’ inability to secure a 2011 sponsor by the start of the Tour de France.
“One of the reasons is of course that I want to try something new,” he told TV2 Sport. “And then of course it was also an influence that there was such a long period before Bjarne could present a sponsor. I would have liked to have been in control of that before the Tour began.”
Michael Rasmussen is another rider who has been speculated to be leaving Saxo Bank. He will be racing in the Vuelta for Riis’ team, but no contract extension has been signed.
"I can confirm that we had a meeting with Bjarne Riis,” said Rasmussen’s personal sponsor, Christina Hembo. “He was very attentive, but we reached no conclusion at the meeting. Now, we await further information from him."
Matti Breschel has confirmed that he will be leaving Saxo Bank for Dutch team Rabobank, leaving Riis with one less major local team member, and feeling pressure to highlight Saxo Bank as a Danish team. Without Fuglsang and Breschel, the team has scrambled to sign Danish riders, such as Michael Morkov, who has signed a two-year contract with Saxo Bank.
“Michael is a rock solid, loyal and powerful rider who has an eye for the importance of team spirit and I'm very happy to have him on the team for another two years,” said Riis. “His tireless commitment throughout the whole year calls for recognition and with his growing potential, I'm considering him in the line-up for the spring classics next year.”
Tags: