VALENCIA, 29 February 2004 — Kelme rider Alejandro Valverde led a Spanish sweep of the Tour of Valencia yesterday thanks to his third-place finish in the fifth and final stage won by Belarus rider Alexandre Usov.
Valverde, who dominated the race in which he won two stages, took the title with a nine-second lead on Antonio Colom with David Blanco at 22sec.
“This allows us to forget the crisis in the team. People talk more now about what’s happening in offices than on the road,” said Valverde, after Kelme were relegated to the second division because of financial problems. Kelme controlled the day’s racing, keeping tabs on an attempt by French riders Stephane Goubert and Sylvain Chavanel, Spaniards Jose Alberto Martinez and Alberto Contador and Scotland’s David Millar to form a peloton.
Phonak rider Usov won the sprint finish after the 165.5km stage around Valencia timing 3hrs 35min 02sec ahead of Germany’s Robert Bartko.
Armstrong Faces Up to Losing the Tour
Meanwhile, five-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong has hinted he could retire at the end of the season but admits he might find the prospect of losing this year’s Tour de France too hard to swallow.
The 32-year-old Texan is targeting a record sixth win in cycling’s blue-riband event and admits retirement is a thought. But he told The Times newspaper yesterday: “I can’t imagine being retired 12 months from now. But I’m open to the possibility there will be a tap on the shoulder and someone says ‘time’s up’.
“This could be my last year. If I lost I don’t know if I would say ‘OK, I’m past my prime, time to go’, or if I’d say, ‘I’ve got to try again’. People who know me best, I think they’d say the guy has to try again.”
But he makes no secret of the fact that riding in the Tour de France is hell. “I don’t think there is a harder sporting event anywhere,” he says.
“Imagine a marathon and Formula One combined — that’s what it’s like. It’s three weeks of agony and it’s hard and it hurts and it can be dangerous and every single guy who does it is one tough person.”
The US Postal rider got his season off to a solid start at the Tour of the Algarve in Portugal, where he finished fifth overall after winning the individual time trial.
He reiterated his belief that Germany’s Jan Ullrich remained his leading contender for Tour glory and he would be monitoring his progress in the buildup to the Tour. “I was thinking what would I do if I heard Ullrich had won a time trial in February,” he said.
Belgian Cycling Classic Called Off
In Ghent, Belgium, snow and freezing weather has caused the opening one-day classic of the 2004 cycling season, the Het Volk, to be postponed. “We couldn’t guarantee the safety of the riders,” race director Wim Van Herreweghe said yesterday.
