Rocacorba Daily

Diego Ulissi to face disciplinary committee next month

A report on Italian website Tuttobiciweb suggests that sidelined Lampre-Merida rider Diego Ulissi is set to face Swiss Cycling’s Disciplinary Committee before Christmas.

Ulissi will reportedly face the committee on December 23 to discuss the findings of a so-called “controlled excretion” tests that followed Ulissi’s adverse analytical finding for Salbutamol readings well in excess of the allowed amounts.

The two-time Giro d’Italia stage winner returned the adverse analytical finding during the Giro d’Italia and later requested a controlled test in an attempt to replicate the conditions of the race.

Ulissi returned for one race in September, under the belief that there was nothing stopping him from doing so, but was soon sidelined again when the UCI requested that Swiss Cycling open proceedings against Ulissi.

Click here to read more at TuttoBiciWeb.

Michael Matthews to skip Australian summer of racing

After his best season to date — which included stage wins and stints in the overall lead of both the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España — Michael Matthews (Orica-GreenEdge) will skip the summer of Australian racing — including the nationals and Tour Down Under — and will return to racing in March.

While half of Orica-GreenEdge is currently in central Victoria on a training camp, the other half — including Matthews — will have their own camp near the team’s European base in Varese.

“He’s developing to be one of the better riders in the world”, team General Manager Shayne Bannan said of Matthews on the weekend. “We just want to keep that level of progression going,”

“There are stages in the Giro and the Tour de France that he’ll be targeting next year as well as developing him for the one-day classics.”

Click here to read more at the Canberra Times.

Simon Gerrans wins Oppy Medal as Australia’s best cyclist of 2014

Simon Gerrans has capped his best season to date by taking out Cycling Australia’s highest individual honour at the Jayco 2014 Australian Cyclist of the Year Awards in Melbourne on Friday night: the Oppy Medal.

Image: John Veage/Cycling Australia

Gerrans also claimed Elite Male Road Cyclist of the Year and the Subaru People’s Choice Award.

“It’s a huge honour to win the Oppy and have my name alongside previous winners like Russell Mockridge, Cadel Evans, Anna Meares and Caroline Buchanan who have all done great things for cycling in Australia,” said Gerrans.

Other major award winners include:

Elite Female Road Cyclist of the Year: Tiffany Cromwell
Under 23 Road Male: Caleb Ewan
Elite Male Track Cyclist of the Year: Alex Edmondson
Elite Female Track Cyclist of the Year: Amy Cure
Elite Male MTB: Jared Graves
Elite Female MTB: Janine Jungfels

Text adapted from a Cycling Australia media release. Click here for a full list of award winners.

Cycling Australia’s Tour de France Team of the Century

The Jayco 2014 Australian Cyclist of the Year Awards also saw Cycling Australia announce the Australian Tour de France Team of the Century to celebrate 100 years of Australian participation in the Tour de France.

Image: John Veage/Cycling Australia

The selected riders were as follows:

Two riders for the general classification: Cadel Evans, Phil Anderson
Two domestiques to support general classification riders: Richie Porte, Michael Rogers
One sprinter: Robbie McEwen
Two leadout men for the sprinter: Brad McGee, Mark Renshaw
One all rounder: Simon Gerrans
One team captain: Sir Hubert Opperman

“Fifty Australians have ridden the Tour and I have great respect for all those guys,” Phil Anderson said. “It would be hard to imagine what Opperman and (Russell) Mockridge did.

“And I couldn’t imagine what it was like for Snowy Munro and Don Kirkham (the first Australians to ride the Tour in 1914). How did they even know about the Tour?”

Text adapted from a Cycling Australia press release. Click here to see who CyclingTips historian Craig Fry’s picked in his Team of the Century.

Kenny van Hummel announces retirement

Dutch sprinter Kenny van Hummel has announced his retirement from the sport after failing to secure a contract for the 2015 season.

Van Hummel after winning stage 1 of the 2014 Tour d’Azerbaidjan.

Van Hummel raced the 2014 season with Androni Giocattoli - Venezuela after two years with Vacansoleil-DCM and, before that, six years with Skil-Shimano (now Giant-Alpecin). Van Hummel took three victories in 2014 but a lack of funding at Androni Giocattoli - Venezuela saw the Dutchman seeking out a new contract.

“I have decided to end my career as a professional cyclist and I am looking forward to a different side on life,” van Hummel said in a statement on his website. “It wasn’t possible to continue in cycling in a team of the level that I wanted. I had some options, I spoke to some Continental teams but it didn’t feel right.

“Due to a disappointing sponsor budget my current employer, Team Androni- Giocattoli, had to decide to put together another team, where more space for Italian riders. It is too bad, because both I and they like to work together.”

Click here to read more at Kenny van Hummel’s website.

FDJ reveals 2015 kit

FDJ.fr has revealed a new kit for the 2015 season with the team trading their mostly blue kit of this season for a red, white and blue ensemble in 2015.

fdj_presenta_su_nuevo_maillot_mas_blanco_002_670

The team will be known simply as FDJ in 2015, rather than FDJ.fr, and the team will once again ride Lapierre bikes.

Astana-BePink women’s team to become Astana-Acca Due O

Astana’s professional women’s team, Astana-BePink will be rebranded Astana-Acca Due O in 2015 with the Italian water treatment company coming on board as the second title sponsor.

“The project is very exciting,” said Olympic time trial champion and former world time trial champion Zulfia Zabirova, who now works with the team. “[Our] long-term goal is to bring Astana to be the first team in the world within four years.”

The team will be registered in Kazakhstan with many riders to come from Eastern Europe, but the team will be based in Cornudo, Veneto, Italy.

Meanwhile, BePink has partnered with cycling apparel brand LaClassica and will race as BePink-La Classica in 2015. The team revealed its new kit over the weekend.

L'équipe BePink - LaClassica a dévoilé son maillot pour la saison 2015. Vous le trouvez comment ? #Twittcyclos pic.twitter.com/FShOo8O6zB

— VeloNova (@VeloNova) November 23, 2014

The Week in Bike: TWIBmas is All Around

You’d think the efforts of a past-prime pop star to frack just that tiniest extra bit of success out of his career would have nothing to do with cycling, and yet…there he is in Cosmo Catalano’s cycling headlines of last week. So why not extend the theme — the words of Love Actually‘s Billy Mack do have some surprising applicability to the sport’s current condition, even more so in light in of the latest Astana positive.

We hope you enjoy Cosmo Catalano’s latest episode of The Week in Bike.

Orica-GreenEdge riders get hypnotised

Comedic Hypnotist Isaac Lomman visited Orica-GreenEdge at the team’s training camp in Central Victoria over the weekend, with some interesting results.

Australian cycling in 2014 - the highlights

This highlights reel was shown at the start and finish of the Australian Cyclist of the Year Awards on Friday and features great moments from the road, track and MTB. Amazing clip.

The Rocacorba Recap

And finally this morning, here are a few things you might have missed at CyclingTips:

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Don’t get dropped — keep up to date with regular CyclingTips content, updates, special offers and events, just by signing up to our newsletter.

Today’s feature image was shot by Jered Gruber in the Dolomites.

Mark

On balance the TdF team of the century is probably about right.
- http://conza.tumblr.com/ Conza
  
  Good to see McGee there.
- Nath
  
  Though they are all good picks, I am a little bit disappointed at the lack of older riders. Apart from Opperman everyone is from a very brief period. I would have though Mockridge, for instance, would have been picked over a number of other riders - he deserves it and it would better represent the history we have in cycling.
  - velocite
    
    +1 for Mockridge. Superb athlete.
Kieran Degan

awesome year in review clip. That LBL footage never ceases to move me.
- http://cyclingtips.com.au Matt de Neef
  
  True. Other highlights from me are the shots of an overcome Nettie Edmondson (Comm Games), Cadel’s TDU stage win, the shot of Amy Cure near the start warming up on the rollers, OGE in-car footage of Gerro’s LBL win (?), Rogers’ bow after his TdF stage win(?) … and many others I can’t remember off the top of my head. A beautiful piece of video editing.
  - Kieran Degan
    
    yeah. love that footage of Nettie, clearly means a lot to her. And anything with Cadel… who doesn’t like seeing that guy win.
  - Andy Logan
    
    Makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. I am from the UK, but love seeing the Aussies do so well over the year.
  - Troy
    
    You may want to exclude BMX from the para explaining the footage - there was no BMX footage in the highlights despite an Aussie winning a World Championship. No biggie of course, but BMXA and CA can’t still agree on anything to the detriment of the riders not being acknowledge is that wonderful highlights clip.
Whippet

I hope the riders kept some of the blue FDJ knicks from last year!
Andy Logan

White knicks for FDJ… Hope Roubaix is dry for them this year
Paolo

How did Ewan win the U23 award? With this one medal? Robert Power was the better U23 rider by many miles.
- Sam
  
  Chloe Hosking seems a bit unlucky as well.
  - http://cyclingtips.com.au Matt de Neef
    
    For the Elite Women’s Road Cyclist of the Year? She did win two UCI races (Omloop van Borsele and a stage of the Lotto Belisol Belgium Tour) while Cromwell wasn’t able to find the top step. But I guess what the judges decided was that Cromwell’s 5th at the Worlds and 4th in the Comm Games were bigger results than Hosking’s two wins. Cromwell also managed a whole bunch of top-10 finishes across the year, including several podiums.
- http://cyclingtips.com.au Matt de Neef
  
  Rob Power was nominated for the award and I thought he was going to win it as well. Ewan had the silver medal at the Worlds to his name, plus a stage at the Tour de l’Avenir, a second place at the Tour of Beijing, and the road and criterium championships at the Nationals earlier in the year. It’s not a bad year by any stretch.
  
  But for mine, Power’s was as good, if not better: Oceania U23 road race champ, 7th overall at the UCI 2.1 Tour d’Azerbaidjan, a hat-trick of victories in hard Italian one-day races and, most importantly, second overall at the Tour de l’Avenir. Very impressive.
- Dave
  
  Ewan is very much CA’s current Chosen One.
  
  Hopefully CA will get a bit more of a return for their investment in Ewan than they did with Heinrich Haussler who has achieved the sum total of squat all in national colours since he was bought over, I mean brought over, from racing for Germany.
velocite

I suspect that magician is a vampire.
Steve

Without disrespect to Bobridge as a former Aus champ, the Matthews / Bobridge “swap” has turned out to be one of the sweetest deals ever.
Arfy

“The Team of the Century” is something to be proud of, and it’s a great team that’s been chosen.

However, CA’s line that “Cycling Australia’s anti-doping policy stipulated that riders with doping convictions or who have made confessions were ineligible for selection” means that any riders who were selected and were thinking about coming out now have another reason to keep their mouth shut. It seems CA’s policy is about alienating confessed dopers and warmly embracing the unconfessed.

Remember CA, the cancer doesn’t go away, it keeps growing until it kills you.
- dbranson
  
  Not sanctioning riders with doping convictions or confessions also creates problems. If you win because of doping and make “The Team of the Century” then that leaves little for clean riders. If you are guilty of cheating then there must be a consequence for your actions.

Monday November 24, 2014

by Matt de Neef - November 24, 2014