L AURENS TEN DAM
THE LAST WORD
Laurens casts his eye over cycling’s transfer season
I
am currently in hibernation mode. Whereas in a normal year I would open my laptop early in the mornings to see who won the stage in the Tour Down Under, nowadays I sleep in till my alarm rings. My cycling season clock is off.
One thing which awakens my biological clock is the pictures that come in from the team camps in December. For obvious reasons, those camps didn’t happen this year. I love the media coverage from those camps a lot. Or, the non-coverage. The teams use that camp as a first gettogether. They measure clothes, bikes and discuss each rider’s race programme. But as the riders’ contracts start on January 1 and these camps happen in December, new recruits are still training in their old kit with their new team members. Big star and Ag2r signing Greg Van Avermaet would still rock his CCC kit in between a tonne of Ag2r riders. In his case he would be wearing a kit from a team that’s already folded, which makes it even more strange. Imagine this in football: a Liverpool player still training in his Chelsea kit. Unthinkable, but in cycling it is possible while there is an easy solution -let those contracts start on December 1.