Having spent his entire career with Bjarne Riis team, first CSC and then Saxo Bank, Andy Schleck’s relationship with his long-time mentor has cooled considerably. The Luxembourg rider has left the Danish team, along with elder brother Fränk and a number of other teammates, to set up their own team, which has changed things between them; it was Riis decision to send Schleck and Stuart O’Grady home from the Vuelta a España in September was the final straw.
Schleck and Riis are still on speaking terms; “But our relationship is not what it once was,” he said on Sporza.
“We still talk occasionally,” he explained, “but it’s not the same. I still disagree with his decision to throw O’Grady out of the Vuelta; we didn’t get a chance to defend ourselves and he could have punished us in other ways.”
O’Grady and Schleck were both sent home after they went out drinking after dinner on the rest day. Neither side has ever officially said what happened that night, but some reports have suggested that the pair did not return to the team hotel until after five o’clock in the morning.
Andy Schleck had been riding the Vuelta, not having raced since the Tour de France (where he may yet be retrospectively declared the winner) in support of brother Fränk; O’Grady was using the race, like many others, to prepare for the World Championships in his native Australia. Fränk was forced to try to win the race without his brother’s support, just as Andy had race the Tour without him after he crashed out on the cobbles of stage 3; he ended the race in fifth place, 4’45” behind Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas-Doimo).
Both brothers have now quit the Saxo Bank team to form their own, as yet unnamed team; they will be joined by O’Grady and other current teammates Jakob Fuglsang, Dominic Klemme, Anders Lund and Jens Voigt. Multiple World time trial champion and classics king Fabian Cancellara is also strongly rumoured to be following.