Astana in Javea

If you want to avoid controversy at doping discussion you should have written :
It was good for the future of cylcing to see the arrival of the UCI testers... even if there is some little disagreements..

Who are you exactly that you would be making a song and dance complaint about training being interupted on the final day by a UCI test? in the interests of any casual observer of cycling in its present situation, random UCI tests are a comforting reassurance.

Why do you pretend that you are an independent observer when it seems obvious by your post that you are connected to the team, and most likely a SRAM representative?

Crankyfeet said:

Who are you exactly that you would be making a song and dance complaint about training being interupted on the final day by a UCI test? Sounds like you're part of the team. Or are you the local barman?

Thanks for the information. I am looking at the SRAM components as well.

As I said the team and the riders clearly accepted it as business as usual and I have nothing to do with the team (or the local bar).

It annoyed me only in as much as I was hoping to get some good photos of a friend and me with the whole team together on their last day and the testing scuppered it, so purely selfish interest on my part and no reflection of a moral stance on the testing procedures.

We run cycling training camps on the Costa Blanca and it's good PR for us and the area when the likes of Astana are here .

Denia said:

As I said the team and the riders clearly accepted it as business as usual and I have nothing to do with the team (or the local bar).

It annoyed me only in as much as I was hoping to get some good photos of a friend and me with the whole team together on their last day and the testing scuppered it, so purely selfish interest on my part and no reflection of a moral stance on the testing procedures.

We run cycling training camps on the Costa Blanca and it's good PR for us and the area when the likes of Astana are here .

Thanks for the reply. I apologize for the accusations. But your dissatisfaction at not being able to get a photo seemed to go beyond inconvenience and extend to complaints about UCI compared to other sports.

[PS I edited my original post slightly and took out the refernce to yourself being the barman at Costa Blanca]

Denia said:

We run cycling training camps on the Costa Blanca and it's good PR for us and the area when the likes of Astana are here .

Do you have a website for your bike camps ? Be interested in having a look.....

......now come on.... tell us about the Hog..... how much gear was he passing around ? any signs of a bidon with a pipe hacked into it to make a makeshift bong to chase the burning amphetamine smoke with ? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bong)

whiteboytrash said:

Do you have a website for your bike camps ? Be interested in having a look.....

Yes a website would be really nice to see. You might even get a few customers from my team. It's not much fun riding here in -10C with a lot of snow in the winter...even though now we have hardly any snow here.

What comes to the Astana team being there: it's nice to hear that you can actually to talk to the riders and that they aren't so full of themselves that they wouldn't talk to "us mortals". I wouldn't have actually been very suprised to hear that Contador would've kept to himself mostly, but it's good to know things aren't like that. Can you tell us any more details about their visit?🙂 I'll gladly read everything you're willing to write.

Denia said:

Apparently the shifter/brake leavers have less than 30 components within their bodies while the Shimano and Campy stuff is closer to 100 so much less to potentially look after.

I had my Campy shifters apart a couple of months ago to rebuild them, 100 sure seems like a gross exageration. But maybe that was for both of them? Still seems like an extremely gross exageration. If there really is better than a 3:1 ratio in #'s of parts, that's pretty good and I'm all over them. Seems like twisted facts to me though.

Bikeridindude said:

I had my Campy shifters apart a couple of months ago to rebuild them, 100 sure seems like a gross exageration. But maybe that was for both of them? Still seems like an extremely gross exageration. If there really is better than a 3:1 ratio in #'s of parts, that's pretty good and I'm all over them. Seems like twisted facts to me though.

Yes the SRM shifters have less parts to leave room for the "uppers" to tucked away...... The HOG is like a good chess playing junkie..... always two moves ahead and thinking about the next hit and the hit after that.......

whiteboytrash said:

Yes the SRM shifters have less parts to leave room for the "uppers" to tucked away...... The HOG is like a good chess playing junkie..... always two moves ahead and thinking about the next hit and the hit after that.......

I think you're being quite unfair to the Hog. If he answers kids' questions for half an hour there's no way he would dope his riders.

He would feed the kids to the riders if it made him rich and famous.

Bikeridindude said:

I had my Campy shifters apart a couple of months ago to rebuild them, 100 sure seems like a gross exageration. But maybe that was for both of them? Still seems like an extremely gross exageration. If there really is better than a 3:1 ratio in #'s of parts, that's pretty good and I'm all over them. Seems like twisted facts to me though.

Shimano shifters have quite complicated mechanisms. Campy uses a much simpler (and better 🙂) design. The mechanic's statement seems to me to be [censored]. You don't take apart Shimano's shifters; they are not user serviceable. So it doesn't matter if they have a million sub-components. It doesn't make the mechanic's job any easier.

I count twenty internal parts for campy. (diagram below)

Getting sponsorship with Astana is a geat coup for SRAM.

RdBiker said:

Yes a website would be really nice to see. You might even get a few customers from my team. It's not much fun riding here in -10C with a lot of snow in the winter...even though now we have hardly any snow here.

What comes to the Astana team being there: it's nice to hear that you can actually to talk to the riders and that they aren't so full of themselves that they wouldn't talk to "us mortals". I wouldn't have actually been very suprised to hear that Contador would've kept to himself mostly, but it's good to know things aren't like that. Can you tell us any more details about their visit?🙂 I'll gladly read everything you're willing to write.

We are in the middle of a website redesign which will go live next week so apologies for the existing site not being particularly great. If you are interested in visiting us to train you will find details of the camps and cycling breaks at:

www.ciclocostablanca.com

Jan through April normally sees average temperatures around 16-19 degrees so certainly a bit warmer than Finland. If you are interested in combining riding with seeing some pro stage races then the Tour of Valencia (February) and Murcia (normally early March) are good times to be here.

Bro Deal said:

Shimano shifters have quite complicated mechanisms. Campy uses a much simpler (and better 🙂) design. The mechanic's statement seems to me to be [censored]. You don't take apart Shimano's shifters; they are not user serviceable. So it doesn't matter if they have a million sub-components. It doesn't make the mechanic's job any easier.

I count twenty internal parts for campy. (diagram below)

Getting sponsorship with Astana is a geat coup for SRAM.

BRO - The mechanics said they had no problem with the move to SRAM (nor do the riders) and mentioned that the shifiting components had much fewer mechanical parts compared to Shimano and Campy. The speculation of it potentially being easier to maintain was actually from me - if wrong then apologies for my lack of mechanical knowledge or for you thinking the mechanic was "bullshitting" -something he certainly didn't do at any time.

Again for anyone interested, the standard set-up on the chainsets was 53-39 and the rear cassettes appeared to standardise around 23T. A number of the bikes had the red SRAM powermeter boxes hooked up also. Contador was training on carbon bontrager wheels while the majority of the rest (having just moved away from their Astana BMC bikes) were on bontrager classic wheels while awaiting their new Trek bikes in January. The standard saddle was the bontrager in-form model.

Denia

Was Kloeden among them? What Hotel are they staying in? Did you see Ekimov with them?

PEZ On The Scene: Astana's First Camp!
pezcyclingnews.compezcyclingnews.comOpen ↗

Denia said:

BRO - The mechanics said they had no problem with the move to SRAM (nor do the riders) and mentioned that the shifiting components had much fewer mechanical parts compared to Shimano and Campy. The speculation of it potentially being easier to maintain was actually from me - if wrong then apologies for my lack of mechanical knowledge or for you thinking the mechanic was "bullshitting" -something he certainly didn't do at any time.

Again for anyone interested, the standard set-up on the chainsets was 53-39 and the rear cassettes appeared to standardise around 23T. A number of the bikes had the red SRAM powermeter boxes hooked up also. Contador was training on carbon bontrager wheels while the majority of the rest (having just moved away from their Astana BMC bikes) were on bontrager classic wheels while awaiting their new Trek bikes in January. The standard saddle was the bontrager in-form model.

Denia

Thanks for the inside info. An interesting read.

italiano said:

Was Kloeden among them? What Hotel are they staying in? Did you see Ekimov with them?

Ekimov was there and also was happy to do photos with us, Kloden wasn't there, nor Levi.

They were in the hotel Rodat, Javea, up until this morning. I believe they now go home until January when some of them will be in the US for another training camp while others will be going to the Tour Down Under. Most of them are then back in this part of Spain through February and March for the Tours of Mallorca, Valencia and Murcia.

Denia said:

.
the tests were run across prettty much the whole team (although Contador had left the camp to be in France for TdF media/sponsorship commitmemts).

Handy that....

Rolfrae said:

Handy that....

I thought someone would have made that observation earlier actually. Que sera, sera . . .

As Alberto Contador's absence was for a media/sponsorship commitment, one can only suppose the UCI knew when they planned their visit to Javea who they would be able to test on any given day as they know the travel plans of each rider. From what I picked up from the team in Javea, they expected a visit during the camp but didn't know which day - it could have happened anytime between the 10th-17th. The testers had been further up the coast a few days earlier visiting the Liquigas camp so popping down to Javea was always on the cards.