Triple Tour de France winner Alberto Contador has spoken about his move to the Saxo Bank Sungard team for 2011, saying that he is motivated to compete strongly with the squad and also to repay the support he has been shown by others.
“I have a great responsibility,” he said at a press conference held yesterday, according to Ekstrabladet. “It is a team with great prestige, there is a whole country behind the team. I have received many messages from people who are looking forward to my racing for Team Saxo Bank Sungard.”
Contador got a great reception in Denmark yesterday, receiving plenty of support from the crowd when competing in a criterium in Herning, Bjarne Riis’s home town. He hasn’t raced recently, though, and so was a little off his top form.
At the conference beforehand, the 27 year old suggested that there would be tactical advantages to be gained from working with Riis. His likely main rivals in the Tour spent several years riding for the team owner, and that kind of insider knowledge is likely to prove extremely useful when it comes to determining tactics and exploiting weaknesses.
“It is also very important for me to work with a man who has as much experience as Bjarne Riiis, and who knows the Schleck brothers well,” he explained to those present. Andy Schleck finished just 39 seconds behind him in this year’s Tour and is shaping up to be a major danger next year.
Riis’s signing of the Spaniard is regarded as something of a master stroke, given that the team was believed to be teetering on the brink for much of this season. Saxo Bank said that it wanted to withdraw its sponsorship a year earlier than expected, but then did an abrupt volte-face when it learned that it might be possible to have Contador on board.
Aside from winning the past three Tours he entered, plus the 2008 Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España, he also has named a tantalising goal which would lead to massive publicity should he manage to pull it off; namely, winning the Giro, the Tour and the Vuelta in the same season. The feat has never before been achieved in the history of cycling, and would be a superb athletic achievement.
Riis was the one who first mentioned that target, letting it slip at the press conference held at the start of this month announcing Contador’s arrival.
“Alberto’s ambition is to win all three major stage races in the same year, and I want to be part of it,” he stated then.
He is now appearing to be backtracking slightly, at least in terms of saying when it could happen. “It is provisionally postponed,” TV2 Sport reported Riis as saying at yesterday’s conference.
“Ever since I began to talk to Alberto, he told me that it is a dream for him to win the three major stage races in one year. Obviously, it would be great to make that dream a reality, but it will not be next year. We must first learn to cooperate.
“Maybe the dream will turn into reality one day, but it is obviously up to Alberto if he wants to work for it. I just have to sit in the car.”
If Contador is going to achieve the Grand Slam with Riis, it may have to come as early as 2012. Current Caisse d’Epargne team manager Eusebio Unzue said yesterday that he was determined to sign the Spaniard for the 2013 season, and so it may be the case that he doesn’t remain with the Danish team longer than the two year deal he signed this month.
If so, 2011 will be about settling in, fine-tuning the interaction with support riders and management, and chasing his fourth Tour victory. He could also try to take the Giro or the Vuelta, then aim even higher the following year.