Will target the Giro and the Vuelta – if his Geox team is invited
Carlos Sastre won the 2008 Tour de France but will be unable to try again this year. His new Geox team has not been invited to the event. Even for the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a España Geox needs an invitation, but since the decisions are out of Sastre’s hands, he is not preoccupied by it. The Geox team was presented in Padua, Italy, yesterday and Sastre spoke to Marca at length about his situation.
At this point, the Tour is not on his mind at all. “In July we will feel something is missing, but now we have more than enough races to do, because I believe we will do the Giro. The absence of the Tour doesn’t alter our program too much.”
Sastre has done the triple (riding the Giro, the Tour and the Vuelta in the same year) twice, with a chance to do it again in 2011. “It is not something that you think about and that you can easily do. What all of us would have liked is a fixed program, without depending on invitations. But since it is not in our hands, I am not going to go crazy over it.”
He is hoping to be able to ride the Grand Tour in Italy again this year. “I like the Giro route a lot and I would like to do well in it. And the Vuelta you already know how much it means to me.”
Sastre will prepare the Giro with four shorter stage races in his native Spain, taking part in Murcia, the Volta a Catalunya, País Vasco and Castilla y León. He is fully concentrated on cycling again, describing the years at the Cervélo TestTeam as not quite easy. “This year I can train without complications and do what I want, without having to think about other things.” Sastre would love to win some races again but says he doesn’t know how far he can get with the objective. “I want to do my things well and then if I am ahead – perfect.”
Even when he is beaten, he won’t have complaints. “When I have an objective I prepare it 100 percent. If I don’t achieve more it is because I can’t.” With his weaker time trialing skills, the hilly Giro should be a good goal. “I like the route a lot, but I also like the route of the Tour and the Vuelta.”
Sastre doesn’t understand politics behind Tour non-invite
There, he brought up the Tour, whic is still a race he tremendously loves. A meeting was set up between his Geox team and the Tour organizers, to which Sastre was invited as well. “I was mostly listening because I didn’t understand at all what was talked about in the meeting. I don’t understand politics.”
For the Spaniard there was no question that from a sports point of view, Geox should have been included in the Tour de France. “Certainly. It is not only what I think but what everybody else thinks.” Sastre was less sad for himself than for his teammate Denis Menchov. “He is still young, he was third in the Tour and has already won two Vueltas and the Giro. Some say that I am past my prime and I accept that. It is not important to me, but he and some others are the present.”
Sastre says that he gets along with Menchov quite well and is certain that one will support the other, depending on who has the better legs. “We have a lot of respect for each other, having battled often.”
Sastre has had a much quieter winter than in his two previous years. “I hope that my batteries are recharged. I had time to recover and to train.” In three weeks his first race, the Vuelta a Murcia, will start. Sastre trained consistently in the winter, even when it was cold. “The coldest I rode in was six degrees centigrade below freezing [21 Fahrenheit], for three hours.”
Sastre has only signed a one-year contract., He is as of yet undecided whether to continue his career afterwards or not. “I follow my instinct. I haven’t made a decision yet about 2012, but currently I can’t think of anything else to do than to hop on a bicycle.”