As he prepares to battle for a Giro d’Italia-Tour de France double, Alberto Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo) says he is in good shape, fully recovered from a micro-fissure in his sacrum caused by a crash late on in Volta a Catalunya and looking forward to getting stuck into the most important challenge of his career.
Widely considered the greatest stage racer of his generation, Contador’s aim of taking a Giro-Tour double, the first since Marco Pantani, is an exceptionally ambitious target in anybody’s book. But as the 32-year-old Spaniard has said throughout the last six months, therein lies part of the interest in his trying to succeed in it.
With the start of the Giro d’Italia fast approaching on May 9, the first part of that challenge is now just days away. And as Contador told Cyclingnews during the final part of his training block at altitude in Teide in the Canary Islands earlier this week, his form is exactly where he wants it to be for the Grand Tour.
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“I’m going very well, the big blocks of training here in the Canaries are all but finished and I’m now beginning to go through the recovery phase prior to the Giro,” he said.
“I’ve done a huge amount of climbing rides in these last three weeks and now what we’ve got to do is ease back before next week.”
The one hiccup, a micro-fissure in the sacrum – a minute but painful crack in a bone in the lower back, caused by the crash in the closing kilometres of the second last stage of the Volta a Catalunya in late March – was discovered with a hospital visit a week after he started training in the Canaries. Contador, although injured, completed the stage, and finished the race fourth overall.
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