In a new run of features, Cyclingnews sits down with some of the sport's well-known personalities as they pick their cycling dream teams. This week it's the turn of 2008 Tour de France winner Carlos Sastre.
The rules:
- Dream teams must feature nine riders, one of which can be the rider selecting the team. In which case they pick eight riders to join them.
- The riders picked must have all ridden with the person picking the team. That means you can’t just pick the eight or nine best riders of a generation.
Image courtesy of Pro Cycling Trumps
Team leader: Carlos Sastre
With myself as the team leader, these are the eight riders I’d like to see with me in my ideal squad for a Grand Tour.
Climber: José María Jiménez
I know I’m not officially allowed to have a rider who wasn’t on my team as a dream teammate, and it’s true we never raced together but José María and I were very close personally and for family reasons [ed. the riders were brothers in law] and we trained together for years and years on the roads around our area. There was a really deep degree of understanding between us.
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When I started riding as a pro, he was already on top of his game and I was the new little kid on the block who’d just arrived, and I looked up to him a lot. But even when I got better on the climbs we never had a real battle in the mountains of the kind I’d really have liked, and that’s something I regret, even now.
The closest I can really claim to doing so was in the 2001 Vuelta a España when there was a stage to the Cruz de la Demanda summit finish [ed. stage eight]. That day he went for it right from the foot of the climb and I charged out of the pack and started trying to chase him down. It was going to be a right old battle, there were just the two of us ahead but then my teammate at ONCE, Joseba Beloki was going to be the overall leader so because of team orders I had to sit up and wait for him so I could take Joseba as far up the climb as possible.
And that was that, really. Afterwards he [Jiménez] won the stage and on the time trial to Pal [in Andorra] he won, again, although I got second. Then on the Vuelta’s stage with a summit finish to Aitana [stage 15] before the stage we both promised my wife [Jose Maria Jimenez’ sister] that if either of us won, then my wife and I’s [future baby] daughter would be named Aitana in honour of the climb. As it was, neither of us did win - I got third behind Claus Moller and Jose María blew completely almost as soon as the climb had started. Then the next day there was a really dodgy descent [off the Cresta del Gallo - Ed.] going into Murcia, I fell and hurt my back and had to withdraw from the Vuelta three days from the finish and pretty soon after that he retired from cycling altogether. So that was where it all ended, far too soon.
The best thing about him as a teammate would be that the way he attacked on the climbs was utterly unpredictable. Invariably, it would really upset the opposition’s game plans, whatever strategy they had would go up in smoke. He was not a good time triallist at all, apart from mountain time trials, but his sense of humour was really special as well. It didn’t matter how big or small the race was or how tense everybody was feeling, he had a knack for making people relax a little and have a bit of a laugh despite the stresss. And if races weren’t going so well, that was just what you needed at times to keep your spirits up, and as I know, that better atmosphere often leads, eventually, to a team working well and getting good results.
Climber: Juan José Cobo
Cobo was a hugely talented climber - he won on the Angliru. In fact he won the Vuelta there and he dropped both Chris Froome and Bradley Wiggins, half-way up the Angliru, in the process. How many riders were able to do that? As a leader, he wasn’t good at all, probably because he didn’t have a nasty enough side to him, and to be a good leader, sometimes you have to be very direct and take tough decisions about your team-mates. But as a climber, he was ideal.
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