Learning from their mistakes of a year ago, Tour de France director Jean-MarieLeblanc and his team selection committee at least explained thistime why they are snubbing Italy’s most popular cycling stars Mario Cipolliniand Marco Pantani.You may remember that in May last year, when announcing the five wild-cardteam selections for the 2001 Tour, Leblanc said that he took the numberof French teams up to eight because his committee favored the potentialof young-generation home teams over the possible failure of older-generationforeign teams. This year, in his announcement in Paris Thursday morning,Leblanc didn’t mention any of that generation stuff — but his all-Frenchcommittee again excluded Cipollini and Pantani while naming four Frenchsquads in its list of five wild cards for the 2002 Tour.

“What, then, is different?” you may ask. Well, at least they includedone extra Italian team — the Saeco-Longoni squad of Gilberto Simoni andDanilo Di Luca — and explained that the fifth slot only went on a 4-3 voteto France’s AG2R Prévoyance over Italy’s (and Cipollini’s) Acqua& Sapone-Cantina Tollo formation. But this decision hardly conformsto the committee’s “supporting young French riders” philosophy.

Let’s look first  at AG2R. It has an aging team, led by an Estonian,Jaan Kirsipuu, who’ll be 33 in July and who hasn’t raced since droppingout of Paris-Nice in March and then breaking his collarbone in a trainingaccident. His main support riders are Alexander Botcharov, a Russian; LudovicCapelle, a Belgian; Iñigo Chaurreau, a Spaniard; Linas Balciunas,a Lithuanian; and Lauri Aus, another Estonian. The best French rider onthe team is Christophe Agnolutto, who also celebrates his 33rd birthdaythis year. Where’s the young French generation?

Now take at look at Acqua & Sapone. It, too, is led by an aging sprinter, but Cipollini just happens to have won two spring classics this year, Milan-San Remo and Ghent-Wevelgem, and although he’s 35, the Lion King has a much better Tour record — with a dozen stage wins and a several days in the yellow jersey. Leblanc’s justification for including AG2R was:

“You have to remember that Jaan Kirsipuu wore the yellow jersey two years ago [Note: it was actually three years ago], that he won a stage last year, as did Christophe Agnolutto before that. (And) it wouldn’t be very honest to not remember the circumstances that have deprived the team of Kirsipuu since mid-March.”

Besides the Cipollini factor, Acqua & Sapone could point to thatfact that only the day before Thursday’s announcement, the Italian team’s Giovanni Lombardi had won a difficult stage of the Tour de Romandie. And that the squad has plenty of other riders who could perform well at the Tour, including Spaniards Miguel Martin Perdiguero and Santos Gonzales,while the “Zebra Guard” of Massimiliano Gentili, Mario Scirea, GabrieleColombo, Guido Trenti and Lombardi would have had a huge influence on theeight flat stages that precede the mountains of this year’s Tour.

As for again leaving out the Mercatone Uno squad, Leblanc left open a faint chance for the team to ride this year’s Tour, when he said, “If [Pantani] wins the Giro, we will revisit the question of including a 22nd team.”

It should be remembered that Pantani has won Tour stages at Plateaude Beille (1998), Mont Ventoux (2000), Les Deux-Alpes (1998) and La Plagne(1997) — the four toughest mountaintop finishes in the 2002 Tour. WhetherPantani can return to that highly competitive level is another question.The upcoming Giro should provide the answer.

Besides Saeco and AG2R, the Tour committee added Bonjour, CréditAgricole and La Française des Jeux to the list of 16 teams alreadyprequalified: Alessio, Fassa Bortolo, Lampre-Daikin, Mapei-Quick Step andTacconi Sport from Italy; Euskaltel-Euskadi, iBanesto.com, Kelme-CostaBlanca and ONCE-Eroski from Spain; Domo-Farm Frites and Lotto-Adecco fromBelgium; CSC-Tiscali from Denmark, Deutsche Telekom from Germany, Rabobankfrom the Netherlands and the U.S. Postal Service.

The three other French teams were a better choice than AG2R. Bonjouris currently winning a lot of races in France — with a true younger generationof French riders. Crédit Agricole was selected on the basis of its 2001 Tour, although Stuart O’Grady has been out of action since Februaryafter surgery. And La Française des Jeux has even more potentialthan last year, thanks to the acquisition of Aussie Baden Cooke and the reinvigorated form of French sprinter Jimmy Casper, along with the presence of its young Australian leader Brad McGee and aging French animator Jacky Durand.

Among the other teams that were considered for a wild-card slot wereBigMat-Auber 93 and Jean Delatour of France, and Coast and Gerolsteinerof Germany. Neither of the two French teams has had any significant successesthis year, and so their non-selection was not a great surprise. And Gerolsteiner, led by Italians Davide Rebellin and Gianni Faresin, would be stretched to field competitive teams for both the Giro and Tour. But Coast is a different matter.

Coast has one of the strongest rosters in the world, and has been winning races all year, while figuring strongly at the spring classics. If there is a case for adding a 22nd team then Coast is the one that should be added. Its absence deprives the fans of watching former, but still competitive,Tour stars Fernando Escartin and Alez Zülle; last year’s Vuelta winnerAngel Casero and his Spanish guard of Manuel Beltran, Aitor Garmendia andDavid Plaza; and the potential sprinting standout, Thorsten Wilhelms.Maybe next year?