Viviani makes plans, Hamilton weighs in on Armstrong doc: Daily News Digest
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Hello again, CyclingTips readers.
Like everyone else right now, pro cyclists have seen their plans upended this year, but that doesn’t mean that they are throwing their objectives out the window.
Count Elia Viviani among the big names of the peloton who remain focused on the road racing goals that were motivating them at the start of the season. The Cofidis rider told the Corriere della Sera in a recent interview that he is still hoping to shine at Milan-San Remo, the Tour de France, and the Giro d’Italia, even if they end up taking place on different dates than initially expected.
Speaking of the Tour, Bora-Hansgrohe’s Emanuel Buchmann has offered an interesting perspective on the possibility of running the event without spectators. In the opinion of the versatile young German, while Tour without crowds of fans would certainly not be ideal, it wouldn’t be that far off from a handful of other races that draw WorldTour talent.
As Buchmann put it, “At the UAE Tour in Abu Dhabi, there are hardly any spectators on the roadside, so it’s nothing new to us.”
Read on for more …
Dane Cash
News Editor
What’s news
| Viviani eyes San Remo, Tour, and Giro
Elia Viviani may have to wait on his Olympic track goals now that the Tokyo Games have been postponed to 2021, but he is gearing up for a road program that won’t be that far off from the one he had initially drawn up for this season, assuming racing resumes as planned.
The Italian speedster shed some light on his targets for the revised calendar in an interview with the Corriere della Sera, noting that Milan-San Remo will be a first major objective before Grand Tour season picks up.
“The Tour is the priority,” he said. “But I would like to return to the Giro with the spirit of 2018, full gas from start to finish and with the maglia ciclamino on my shoulders.”
| Buchmann: Racing without spectators would be ‘nothing new’ after UAE Tour
As Tour organizers mull ways to move forward with the race even amid the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent government restrictions on large gatherings, Emanuel Buchmann has opined that a Tour without roadside fans wouldn’t really be all that different from some races that WorldTour riders already attend.
“It would not be nice and a completely different feeling than the past few years. But we could do it for a year,” Buchmann said of a Tour without spectators in an interview with the Deutsche Presse-Agentur. “We also do a lot of bike races where there aren’t that many spectators. At the UAE Tour in Abu Dhabi, there are hardly any spectators on the roadside, so it’s nothing new to us.”
| MPCC president Legeay: Dumoulin’s arguments against MPCC ‘not good ones’
Following Tom Dumoulin’s decision to end his personal membership with the MPCC (Movement for Credible Cycling), the organization’s president, Roger Legeay, has addressed the reasoning Dumoulin provided for his departure.
“I respect the choice of any individual, but in the case of Tom Dumoulin, the arguments he has advanced are simply not good ones,” Legeay said, according to Cyclingnews.
Dumoulin was critical of the MPCC for not taking a stance against the continuation of Paris-Nice earlier this year despite coronavirus concerns, and he also cited the organization’s opposition to ketones as reasons for his decision to leave. Legeay, however, defended the MPCC’s stance to defer to national governments (in the specific case, the French government) regarding restrictions on racing and training, as well as questioning why ketones should be allowed given the performance benefits they appear to provide.
| Hamilton: ‘I’d love to see more of the truth’
With the first episode of ESPN’s two-part documentary LANCE airing this past weekend, Tyler Hamilton has said that he hopes the project provides more honest insight into doping at the highest level of cycling moving forward. Although Armstrong was quoted as saying he would provide “his truth” for the film, Hamilton said in an interview with the Off the Ball podcast that he would like to see more of “the whats, the whys, the how,” and opined that not enough people have told “the full truth,” which would have more serious consequences.
“I don’t think we’ve seen enough of the past from him or from a lot of individuals,” Hamilton said. “There are so many freaking half-truths out there, like, ‘I doped from here to here then stopped.’ There’s a lot of that.”
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SUBSCRIBE TO THE DAILY NEWS DIGEST PODCASTToday’s featured image of Egan Bernal and Emanuel Buchmann at the Tour de France comes from Cor Vos.
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