NAVACERRADA, Spain, 26 September 2004 — Spain’s Jose Enrique Gutierrez, of the Phonak team, won the 20th and penultimate stage of the Tour of Spain (Vuelta) yesterday, a 178km ride between Alcobendas and Navacerrada.
It gave his outfit a welcome piece of news after the revelation earlier in the week that America’s Olympic time-trial champion Tyler Hamilton tested positive for blood doping.
Roberto Heras of the Liberty team kept the overall lead. Gutierrez finished comfortably ahead of Eladio Jimenez with a 35-sec advantage and 1min 25sec in front of David Lastasa but it was the battle for the top spot which was grabbing attention.
In the final climb, Santi Perez, second overall overnight, launched an attack in a desperate attempt to put the pressure on Heras.
In all, he cut 30secs out of Heras’s lead but the leader will still take a 43-sec lead into today’s final stage, a 28.2km time-trial around the streets of Madrid. Neither of the two men are specialists in the discipline.
Italy’s Basso Wins Tour of Emilia
In Bologna, Italy’s Ivan Basso of the CSC team proved his race fitness just before the world Championships by winning the 197km Tour of Emilia cycling race yesterday.
Basso, who finished third in this year’s Tour de France, beat out compatriot Francesco Casagrande in the final kilometer to take the win. Casagrande had been the only one who stayed with him on the tough climb at San Luca. Germany’s Jan Ullrich, the 1997 Tour de France winner who won the Sabatini Cup at Peccioli on Thursday, took an impressive fifth spot to confirm his fitness just a week before the Verona World Championships.
Tour Bosses Snub Pro Tour
Meanwhile, organizers of the three main cycling races — the Tour de France, Tour of Italy and Tour of Spain — have informed cycling boss Hein Verbruggen that they are refusing to take part in the new-look Pro Tour, Vuelta sporting director Victor Cordero said yesterday. Cordero said they have grave reservations about the current format of the Pro Tour, which is part of the International Cycling Union’s (ICU) reform package for cycling. “We have sent a letter to Mr. Verbruggen, to tell him that we cannot associate ourselves with the current format of the Pro Tour,” said Cordero.
Cordero said that letter had been signed by the organizers of the three big cycling races who also run major events such as the Paris-Nice, Paris-Roubaix and Milan San Remo. He said that they were concerned in particular about the ethics behind the Pro Tour that have still to be defined.
There were also concerns about funding and the fact that the four-year cycle meant that teams who are not in at the beginning will be left out in the cold even with excellent races, while those within the Pro Tour could not leave, even with bad results.
US Cyclist D’Antoni Banned for Doping
US cyclist Joseph D’Antoni tested positive for a form of the blood-booster EPO and has accepted a two-year ban, the US Anti-Doping Agency announced in Colorado Springs on Friday. D’Antoni tested positive for recombinant human Eryhropoietin (rEPO), at a track cycling World Cup qualifier on Feb. 26 of this year.
The drug is a synthetic hormone that stimulates the body’s production of red blood cells, thereby increasing oxygen transport and aerobic power.
