News

Wed 24 Jun, 3:20 pm UTC

News archive

Carlos Sastre heads Cervélo TestTeam for Tour de France

By Jeff Jones

Last year's Tour de France winner Carlos Sastre will lead the Cervélo TestTeam at this year's Tour de France, which kicks off in Monaco on 4 July.

Sastre, 34, is the only real general classification rider in the squad, which also includes Tour green jersey winner Thor Hushovd and exciting young sprinter Heinrich Haussler. The other riders are Iñigo Cuesta López (Spa), Volodymir Gustov (Ukr), Andreas Klier (Ger), Brett Lancaster (Aus), José Angel Gomez Marchante (Spa) and Hayden Roulston (NZl).

An interesting omission is Australian Simon Gerrans, who was named as one of three reserves on the team. Gerrans was a stage winner in the recent Giro d'Italia and also has a Tour de France stage win to his name. According to a posting on his Twitter account, Gerrans was "pretty disappointed" with being left out of the Tour team.

Cervélo's team manager Thomas Campana said: "The decision for the final Tour de France Team was certainly not an easy one. Though we are fortunate to have many excellent riders who are in good shape and ready for the Tour, in the end only nine riders per team are allowed to start.

"The goal, for our first Tour de France, will be for a top result in the general classification with defending champion Carlos Sastre. The team will provide Carlos with their full support to help him achieve this goal. Another major goal for us will be

to help our sprint ace Thor Hushovd, win the green jersey. Thor won it in 2005 and we believe he can do it again."

User Comments

There are 10 comments on this post

Showing 1 - 10 of 10 comments

  • Leaving Gerrans out is a joke

  • Gutted! Gerrans is a class act and deserved his spot after a stage win at the Giro. I hope they have made the right decision when Carlos is looking for helps in the mountains. In the latest ProTour rankings, Gerrans is at 41, Marchante 55, Florencio 159 and Cuesta, a 40-year-old journeyman whose last performance of any significance was a stage win in the Tour of Spain nine years ago, does not appear at all among the 190 riders listed. WTF is that about???

  • why oh why leave out your best chance for a break-away stage win?

  • nice to see haydn roulsten get a start though. the guys a machine and definately a chance for a break-away stage win!

  • Gerrans out, as a team you would like to think that they don't run on emotion when picking their team, although sounds like they do. Absolute joke that he is a reserve.

  • Might be the end of the line for Gerrans at Cevelo. If you can;t get a start over a 40 year old, you'd question the teams committment to you, and conversely your committment to the team.

    Gerrans as a lieutentant to Evans in 2010.

  • Not picking Gerrans ? That is ugly - and dumb. This team presents itself as some sort of new generation - give me a break, the DS doesn't know which way is up, that's pretty obvious.

    As for thier claim to offer fan access, I go to the website to air my views and there's no forum - that'd be right.

    Look for a better team. Gerro, one where you'll be appreciated for the star you are.

  • Astana or maybe the newly formed Livestrong Pro cycling Team.

  • Scalpelist: You weren't looking very hard if you couldn't find the forum.

    http://forums.cervelo.com/forums/5.aspx

    And there's already plenty of noise from the Aussie members about Gerrans!

  • Cheers Netsnipe, I followed your link. Maybe I was blinded by fury...but when I went back to the front page of CTT it still wasn't obvious to me where the link had come from.

    Anyway, my spleen is vented now, just a pity a genuinely good rider - regardless of nationality - doesn't get a berth on a team on a team he seems to have shown commitment to.

  • 1

Post comment:

You need to login or register to post comments.

Related links

BikeRadar is not responsible for the content of external websites

Also on BikeRadar