World cycling gun Fabian Cancellara says friendship has lured him to Adelaide for 2020 Tour Down Under
Fabian Cancellara says his friendship with South Australia’s new Tour Down Under race director Stuart O’Grady is luring him to race for the first time in January.
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IT was the friendship of new Santos Tour Down Under race director Stuart O’Grady – and a shared understanding of the trials of life at the top – that will finally bring Fabian Cancellara to Adelaide.
Cancellara will be guest of honour at the 2020 legends’ night dinner at Adelaide Convention Centre on January 25.
He also will be the main attraction at the Westpac Challenge Tour, presented by The Advertiser, where recreational riders tackle Stage 4 from Norwood, to Murray Bridge.
Cancellara and O’Grady were team-mates on the World Tour, and each has suffered under a barrage of criticism and innuendo.
For the Swiss rider, it was a theory he had concealed a motor in his bike to help him win races by gaining traction.
He found the idea amusing at first, but finally it wore him down. So he can relate to (unsupported) speculation that O’Grady took EPO more times than the once to which he has admitted.
Cancellara said the criticism elite riders regularly attracted was often borne of ignorance.
“Recently I had a talk with (Tour de France winner) Brad Wiggins and he said, “Hey sometimes people forget (when they criticise), you have been riding since the junior categories and riding for 10 years in a row at the highest level, on top’,’’ Cancellara said from Switzerland.
“I think in the end I have nothing to prove and nothing to argue about.
“I know that when you win, you always have people that are jealous and always have people that are watching you – this is the price you pay when you win. When you’re on top you have less friends.
“There’s heaps of people that are jealous about Stuey and that’s the same as a rider and if you talk to high-ranking CEO people (they) have not so many friends.
“There are others that would love to be in that same chair. But on the other hand it’s pressure, it’s responsibility and the smart people understand what it really means to be at the top.”
A YouTube video supposedly showed how the Swiss hid an electronic motor during bike races. One video amassed more than three million viewers from 2010, when his magnificent feats were cruelly labelled “mechanical doping.”
He has steadfastly denied any wrongdoing.
“With Stuey he had up and downs and I had my own up and downs,’’ Cancellara said.
“It was very difficult when you get pointed and they say, ‘he did this and that’.
“This is not nice because you have nothing in your hands to control it.
“Everything is influenced from the outside. I had my bicycles at home since I have won races and they’re still the same as when I won. “At first you take it as a compliment but then you … feel the opposite and people are arguing.”
Originally published as World cycling gun Fabian Cancellara says friendship has lured him to Adelaide for 2020 Tour Down Under