a very good year
by Graham Watson
" 'Best team of 2009', 'Best cyclist of 2009' - those are unbeatable awards for Team Astana to brag about as autumn falls and hibernation beckons each and every one of us... Overall victories in the Tour of California, Vuelta Castilla y Leon, Vuelta Pais Vasco and Tour de France form the basis for such domination, to which can be added a whole string of near misses or single-day successes - the latest being Vinokourov's win in France last Sunday.
No matter how delicate these final days of the season are for the fragmenting squad, it has been a very, very good year for one and all, and sets the highest parameters for future Team Astana riders and managers to aspire to. In a sport founded on endurance, power, strength of mind and tactics, it is impossible to judge who deserves more praise - the cyclists who do the pedaling or the men who coach, manage and motivate them to pedal. With such an international mix at Team Astana it falls on a team of highly skilled managers to get the best out of their men, with Johan Bruyneel the arch craftsman above them all.
It was Bruyneel who chose his sport directors two years ago, and who has since selected which of them - Alain Gallopin, Viatcheslav Ekimov, Sean Yates, Dirk DeMol or Alexandre Shefer - leads which team. Often the successes of Contador, Armstrong, Leipheimer, Klöden and Vinokourov divert attention on to themselves - and quite deservedly - but be assured Team Astana's status as best team of the season is a team success, more than anything else. Bruyneel set his ambitions very high when winning the 1999 Tour de France with Armstrong, and the Belgian maestro has added so many awards to his portfolio he is without doubt the most successful sport director of all time.
Because of its relative simplicity, I think Bruyneel would rate that first Tour win in '99 as his easiest, and the 2009 win as his hardest, because of the juggling act he had to perform to keep his team as one in the face of some bitter rivalry, and after months of financial doubts. Imagine coming to the Tour knowing that Contador was the best cyclist in the world and was primed to win, but that a certain seven-time winner of the Tour thought he could win too - and happened to be Johan's long-time friend! The ingredients were there for the floor to cave in on Astana if such rivalry got out of hand, and it fell to Bruyneel (and a highly mature Armstrong) to accept the law of the peloton and make sure the strongest man won, and won for Astana. Only a few privileged people listened-in on radio-talk between Bruyneel, Armstrong and Contador throughout the race and in team talks before each stage - and for sure I was not one of them! But I would love to have been a fly on the wall of Team Astana's fortress in July, for the knowledge gained would have kept me with fine wines for the rest of my days!
Although Bruyneel stepped back after that latest Tour win, his influence on the team continued right until the end, even if the results were not the same - there was a little bit of his spirit behind the thinking of Eki, Yatesy and Gallopin as the summer panned out. 2010 will see Bruyneel and Armstrong in a new squad, with Team Astana picking up the baton and Vinokourov hoping to take the team to future successes. Contador may or may not be a part of that Astana Team, but whatever happens, judging from the last two years - Johan Bruyneel has left his mark on Team Astana, just as he previously did with USPS and Discovery Channel. And I have a feeling the Bruyneel dynasty will continue!
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