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FEATURES: LIVE FROM THE TEAM LIQUIGAS TRAINING CAMP, PT. 1
Zap
December 14, 2011
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For the second consecutive year the Liquigas Pro Cycling Team returned to the island of Sardinia for their annual winter training camp. The Geo Village Resort in the city of Olbia acted as home base for the two week camp that welcomed a handful of new riders (seen riding in their old team kits) and after a year spread about racing all over the globe, gave everyone a chance to reacquaint themselves.
For 2012, there are no big changes at Liquigas with the headliners of Ivan Basso, Vincenzo Nibali and Peter Sagan returning as are most of the sponsors. Here's some of what I saw on day one.
The Liquigas squad is big on promoting strong camaraderie among the riders and so not only is every meal is taken together, but there is a strict rule prohibiting any cell phones at the table. That's American Teddy King waving at you from the back row.
As with every team camp there was no shortage of new bikes being built up. In fact, after our first day, the mechanics and team personnel didn't show up for sinner until long after the riders had finished and returned to their rooms. Most of the wrenching was being done on the assembly of the new Slice RS TT bike (second bike) which was proving tricky with brake set-up (more on that in the next report).
The major difference between the 2011 and 2012 Cannondale Evos is the new blue "Cannondale" running down the head tube.
One of the frame features that helps make the Evo such a nice riding bike is the SAVE design in the front fork as well as the chainstays. You'll also find the same offset fork dropout that was first seen on the 2011 CAAD 10 aluminum bike.
Mavic wheel, Elite cages, Speedplay pedals and SRAM Red remains the gear choices for the Liquigas team. The SRM power meters are also standard equipment.
Colorado's Timmy Duggan returns for a second year with the team along with fellow (and the only other) American, Ted King. Both riders speak fluent Italian and, in another nod to building team spirit, surprisingly, don't even room together.
This being a Euro Pro team camp, headset spacers were (very) few and far in between! The slammed position remains the defacto position of choice for the fast guys.
Both FSA and Fizik are also returning sponsors. Riders ran a choice of seatposts (with and without offset) and saddles (mostly between Arione and Antares).
Proving that some testing was still going on, Nibali had this aluminum CAAD 10 frame as a back-up and was using these wild Powercranks. Yes, they are ridden in this position.
Kristian Koren was suited up and anxious to get out and ride!
This Sardinia camp was actually the second of two off-season camps; the first being in the Dolomites back in November. The first week of the Sardinia camp was intended for tempo rides with many of the bikes running larger than usual rear clusters to emphasize the softer nature of the early rides. The roads of Sardinia provided scenic and relatively quiet roads for the riders to get started on, but the island is full of steep mountains so it was assured that week two would get tougher. Following the Christmas break the team (split into two camps) would begin to focus on their respective early season races in Australia and Argentina. The good news is that American race fans can once again expect to see the blue and green team colors at all the Tours in the States.
LOOK FOR MORE ON THE NEW TT SLICE NEXT |
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