UCI officials found out earlier this week that Lampre had too many racedays after sending in their Tour de France team. Under UCI rules, riders could only ride 62 racedays in a season, but for 3 Lampre riders, the Tour de France will send them over that limit. UCI would not disclose the names of the riders, but refered to them as "Michele S.", "Adriano M." and "some Polish guy".
The punishment by the UCI was most severe. UCI sources claim it to be the biggest yet, but would not disclose the exact amount of ranking points. They did mention the age of the Lampre manager would allow mitigating circumstances, and that future offences would be punished even harder.
Several other teams received a 100 points loss for not sending in their team within the deadline.Edited by Ollfardh on 08-08-2014 09:56
It is now July 2013, the Tour de France has started on Corsica with stage wins for Greipel, Gerrans and De Gendt. In Austria, two young dutchies are fighting for the wins in the Österreich Rundfahrt, Christian De Vries is holding off Wilco Kelderman for now. The Tour of Qinghai Lake has also started, with Fabian Schnaidt giving Champion Systen a home win.
But July also means the transfer season has started. NetApp Endura wasted no time and immediatly re-signed Dermot Walker and Heimdal Hägg, with other a few other deals close to completion as well on day 1. Other than that, there's nothing officialy confirmed, though rumour has it Rudy Verboven is close to extending his contract at Euskaltel. Bad news for Cofidis though, as both Jordan Birtles and Thomas Schwabe have publicly announced they will be leaving the team at the end of the year.
UCI officials found out earlier this week that Lampre had too many racedays after sending in their Tour de France team. Under UCI rules, riders could only ride 62 racedays in a season, but for 3 Lampre riders, the Tour de France will send them over that limit. UCI would not disclose the names of the riders, but refered to them as "Michele S.", "Adriano M." and "some Polish guy".
The punishment by the UCI was most severe. UCI sources claim it to be the biggest yet, but would not disclose the exact amount of ranking points. They did mention the age of the Lampre manager would allow mitigating circumstances, and that future offences would be punished even harder.
Several other teams received a 100 points loss for not sending in their team within the deadline.
We here at Lampre would like to issue the following statement ;
''Whilst every effort is made to abide by the rules of the UCI, sometimes these rules are broken, whether deliberately or just pure carelessness and as such such we cannot defend the fact that we went over our race days with the above mentioned individuals.
We can only apologise for this happening and declare that this will not happen again in the future (hopefully) and as such will take the punishment like men and have done with it''
Yours ever so sorrowfully ''Lampre Merida''
We would also like to take this opportunity be declaring that the ''some Polish guy'' mentioned in the statement is none other than Przemyslaw Niemiec !!!
Compared to the very obvious Giro win for Nibali, le Tour was much closer. As expected, we saw the duel between Froome and Quintana. The young Columbian was leading most of the time, but Froome threw it around on the last mountain stage. Behind those two, Nibali had enough left in the tank to claim the last podium spot. Contador wasn't good enough this year and has to settle for 4th place, 7 second ahead of Valverde. Horner, Kwiatkowski and Van Garderen all had solid rides into the top 10. The biggest surprise in the top 10 has to be Cameron Meyer, beating Niemiec, Rolland, Mollema, Talansky and Bardet for that important last spot.
The green jersey was fought out on the last day, as we like it. Sagan had 4 points on Kittel at the start of the Champs Élysées, with Greipel a bit too far behind to compete. Kittel immediatly took over the lead at the intermediate sprint, but without Greipel, the lead would've been bigger. At the finish, behind an exceptional breakway, Sagan got 9th while Kittel got 11th. Sagan takes the jersey by one point!
Despite an off-day on the penultimate stage that cost him the overall win, Nairo Quintana was the strongest climber this year. He takes home the polka dot jersey, as well as the youth jersey.
Saxo Tinkoff takes the team Classification with Contador, Kreuziger and Rogers, but no TDF podium and no leader left for the Vuelta may make this win a disappointment for them.
A few weeks after le Tour, we are about to start the Vuelta. The 2013 route is pretty much the same as the last years, we start with a team time trial in Galicia, that will decide the first leader. But how long is the question, as stage 2 goes into the mountains already. More hills follow, until we get the first real flat stage at the end of week 1. More mountains follow until the first rest day. The Vuelta probably won't be won yet, but some will have lost it already.
After the rest day, a time trial of almost 40 kilometres will have a big impact on the GC, followed by some more hills. Next come the Perynees, with finishes in France and Andorra. The second rest day will be very welcome after 3 hard mountain stages.
Only 5 stages to go, the first three will probably see some action, but the 4th will finish at the horrible Alto del Angliru. If the GC isn't decided yet, it will be after that stage. The surviving sprinters will get a last chance to shine in Madrid on the last day.
Looking at the favourites, we have 1 clear favourite. Chris Froome is looking for more after his great Tour win, and without Nibali, Quintana or Contador to stop him, this could be a very boring Vuelta. Luckily some other have stepped up. Alejandro Valverde had a decent Tour, but this is his main target of the season. With a strong Spanish team behind him, he could damage Froome in the hills. The same goes for Joaquim Rodriguez, with the aid of Daniel Moreno he can do some damage. If Valverde and Rodriguez team up against Froome, a lot will be possible. But most spectators consider that option highly unlikely.
The rest of the teams can't really be put on the same level. Saxo planned badly and can't count on Contador or Kreuziger, so Majka and Roche will be their leaders. Euskaltel on the other hand planned well and has both Anton and Sanchez available. Astana hopes for Fuglsang, Garmin goes for Martin and Lotto finaly brings Van den Broeck Belkin goes for shared leadership between Ten Dam and Luis Leon Sanchez. Wildcard NetApp has Konig to lead the team. The last name to mention is 64 year old Chris Horner, who has had a good season so far.
For the sprints, Argos wants revenge after losing the green jersey in le Tour by 1 point. Enter John Degenkolb. He seems even more untouchable then Froome, as no other top sprinter showed up. Belkin has Renshaw on the flat and Riquelme on the tougher stages, but they should be no match for John. BMC has been sprinting poorly all season, I don't see Blythe or Van Avermaet changing that here. Euskaltel really focusses on this Vuelta, as they also bring Lobato, their best sprinter. Lotto will try Roelandts and Movistar brings Rojas. But you and I are still looking for someone that can beat Degenkolb, right? Quick Step bring Petacchi, but he's mostly old. Ah, here we go, Michael Matthews! He's young, fast, and takes a hill decently. He gets a decent leadout from Davis as well, so maybe he can do it. Maybe. Sky has a few fast man as well, but nothing that good. So as we end up at the Continental Tour teams, we may have have found Degenkolk's greatest challenge. MTN Qhubeka has Gerald Ciolek and his leadout Mario Guido. Ciolek has had a great season so far, and he can take a hill as well. I still give Degenkolb a slight edge, but who knows?
Plenty of mountains here, so the climbers jersey will probably go to a real climber. I can't see anyone but Chris Froome win this one. Even if he loses the hills to Valverde and Rodriguez, he'll take the mountains. Maybe Luis Leon Sanchez or Ion Izagirre as an outsider, but they'll need to steal a lot of points and I don't see Sky letting a break get away.
The youth classification may be very interesting. No Quintana for once, but also no Kwiatkowsky, Kelderman, Talansky, Bardet, Pinot, Betancur, Henao, Kangert... Rafal Majka might earn a very easy jersey.
Keep an eye on the Story Games section to follow the action!
It's a very low EPIC turnout in general, especially compared to Giro or Tour. Owniak can do something from a breakaway, same with Mitchell Birt. There's only a few others, all inactive. I think it will be a quiet Vuelta from the young riders, but I do hope they prove me wrong
Euskaltel have high hopes for this race in deed. Not only hav we brought both Antón, Sánchez and Spanish champ Lobato. We have also brought the strongest TTT team we could field without Ion.
Feminists all over the world started celebrating today, as the UCI announced its decision to allow a female rider in the peloton for next season. The lucky girl will be Krista Markus, an 18 year old Australian time trialist. She will ride for the Italian Pro Continental team Androni Giocattoli-Venezuela in 2014.
The UCI considers this an experiment to see how women can cope in an elite male competition, something that rarely happens in other sports. Some cycling journalists immediatly welcomed this intiative and assured she could be a good domestique, while others just expressed their hopes that she wouldn't cause too many crashes.
The time trial was won by Garmin, but it was Movistar that dominated the first week with several stage wins, and Valverde took 2 minutes on the competition. Maybe the race wasn't going to be won by Froome after all. Even worse, Movistar was rapidly approaching Sky on the rankings. Would the last Grand Tour of the year cause a massive upset?
Next was Team NetApp's moment to shine. This continental tour team got a wildcard and wanted to show they earn it. Their leader, Konig, crashed early on, and was out of contention for the podium. But youngster Mitchell Birt showed what he was worth by getting back to back stage wins. Unfortunately, he had to abandon after a crash a few days later.
The next days were for that other wildcard team, MTN Qhubeka. They had a hard goal with getting two stage wins here, but with Ciolek, it's not impossible. Though Degenkolb and Matthews controled the sprints in week 1, but Ciolek got two in a row as well in week 2, one where he narrowly beats youngster Jorge Cristobal Riquelme.
Meanwhile in the mountains, Valverde cracks and loses his leader jersey to Rodriguez, who in turn cracks the next mountain stage. Froome takes the lead, but most attention goes to the Astana domestiques, getting 4 wins from the breakaway. Most unlikely of them has to be the Kevin Seeldraeyers win on the Peyragudes.
The final Angliru stage provided great drama. Rodriguez played all or nothing and attacked Froome early on. He's about to turn this Vuelta around, but all of a sudden it's over. Purito overdid it and is forced to abandon on the penultimate stage while being second in the general classification.
Rabon winning the final stage is just a footnote as Froome makes the Tour-Vuelta double. Valverde gets second and Uran moves to third thanks to the Rodriguez abandon. Horner came close to a podium, but a 41 year old on the podium of a GC would just be silly. Konig recovers from his early time loss and finishes top 10 for NetApp. Oreste Ghita also makes it into the top 10 quite unexpectedly and takes the youth jersey ahead of Majka.
Great review and it was surely eventful Also I would just like to make a notice to other members, that they should check out the posibility of joining EPIC!
We will soon enter the Transfer season, so if you want to participate and you have a team you want to customize with your wishes? Then I suggest that you make an application, so your ready for the transfer season, so you can set your own agenda with ideas for the next season
Le Tour de France 
Chris Froome
Nairo Quintana
Vincenzo Nibali
Alberto Contador
Chris Horner
Michał Kwiatkowski
Roman Kreuziger
Cameron Meyer
