2005 Tour de France stage winner Pieter Weening has shown solid form this season with 24th in the Giro d’Italia and fifth in the Ster Electrotoer Tour but he’s set to miss cycling’s biggest event for the second consecutive year.
Weening is annoyed at being passed over by Rabobank, and said that he can’t understand the reason.
"I am angry. They told me: you may be frustrated. Frustrated? Man, I could smash a two metre wall now,” he told the Leeuwarden Courant newspaper. “I understand nothing at all. I cannot understand this…I assumed that I would go to the Tour.''
Weening was not originally scheduled to go but when Laurens ten Dam crashed in the Tour de Suisse, he thought that he’d get his chance. He and Tanking had been named as reserves when the original lineup was announced earlier this month, but the final place has instead gone to the latter.
Technical director Erik Breukink said on Monday that the decision was a difficult one to make, but that they considered the selected rider to be more versatile.
Tankink was third in the Tour of Belgium and then 44th in the Criterium du Dauphiné. Weening has had a more successful season in terms of results, netting those performances in the Giro d'Italia and Ster Electrotoer Tour, and also placing sixteenth in the Tour Méditerranean, eighth in the Vuelta a La Region de Murcia and 17th in the Volta a Catalunya.
The team will be led by Denis Menchov, Robert Gesink and Oscar Freire. The selection of riders is based on a number of factors; results are one component, but also how they fit into the overall structure of the team and also what type of rider is needed to fulfil the overall goals.
He’ll nevertheless be disappointed to miss out on the race for two years in a row, particularly as this year’s event starts in the Netherlands. His 2005 stage win was the most recent victory by a Dutch rider.
Apart from Menchov, Gesink, Freire and Tankink, Lars Boom, Grischa Niermann, Koos Moerenhout, Maarten Tjallingii and Juan Manuel Garate will be also part of the Rabobank team in the Tour.