Heras wants revenge
Roberto Heras doesn’t want to talk about the Tour de France anymore.

With the Vuelta a España starting Saturday in Granada, the Spanish captain of Liberty Seguros wants to erase the disappointment of July with a record fourth Vuelta title.

“I am optimistic and the ‘chip’ has been changed, because the Vuelta is a different race,” Heras said in an interview. “It has nothing to do with the (Tour) from a month ago.”

For the second year in a row, Heras wilted under the pressure at the Tour and was never a factor in the overall classification. Last year’s bitter disappointment was erased was a third Vuelta crown. The quiet Spanish rider hopes to hit replay and win a fourth title.

“My first instinct is to win, but it would also be nice to set the record victory mark and pass into cycling history,” said Heras, who’s been training for several weeks near his hometown of Bejar, Spain.

Landis leads strong Phonak
Floyd Landis will lead a strong Phonak team for the 2005 Vuelta a España. A year ago, Landis snagged the leader’s jersey in the opening team time trial and recaptured it later in the race before abandoning with the flu.

Landis is coming off an impressive top 10 finish in the Tour de France and decided to race the Vuelta to cap his first season as a team captain.

The Swiss team comes motivated for a strong showing in the GC and will want to perform well to defend its strong position in the ProTour team standings. Joining Landis will be Colombians Victor Hugo Peña and Santiago Botero and Tour stage-winner Oscar Pereiro.

Phonak for Vuelta
Floyd Landis
Santiago Botero
Martin Elmiger
Santos Gonzalez
Miguel Angel Martin Perdiguero
Oscar Pereiro
Kike Gutierrez
Ignacio Gutierrez
Victory Hugo Pena

Big Mag leads Liquigas
Magnus Backstedt will lead Liquigas-Bianchi at the Vuelta a España in a team that’s leaving behind GC riders such as Stefano Garzelli and Dario Cioni. ProTour leader Danilo Di Luca will be racing G.P. Ouest France Plouay on Sunday to defend his white leader’s jersey.

Backstedt, winner of the 2004 Paris-Roubaix, is hoping to make up for the disappointment of his early withdrawal from the Tour de France.

“I love Spain for its landscapes and weather, so I am happy to make my debut at the Vuelta,” said Backstedt, who finished second in a stage in the Tour de France into Karlsruhe. “I suffered bronchitis at the Tour that forced me to quit and I’ve been treating it for 20 days, leaving me totally inactive. Even though I lack a little race speed, I’ve felt good in training.”

Liquigas-Bianchi for Vuelta a España
Magnus Bäckstedt
Patrick Calcagni
Mauro Gerosa
Marcus Ljungqvist
Oscar Mason
Devis Miorin
Matej Mugerli
Charles Wegelius
Marco Zanotti.

Ljungqvist joins Team CSC
Swedish rider Marcus Ljungqvist has signed a one-year contract with Team CSC. 30-year-old Ljungqvist began his career in 1998 at Cantina Tollo and has since then won 11 victories as a professional, among them the overall victory in Tour de Luxembourg in 2002, where he was riding for Danish Team fakta with Kim Andersen as sports director.

“Primarily he is a reinforcement to our classics team, but he is a rider, who has the ability to make a difference in almost any kind of race,” said Team CSC manager Bjarne Riis. “He is a really good rider, who has the right attitude and fits perfectly on the team.”

O'Grady may miss world's too
A knee injury suffered by Australian Stuart O'Grady may defer a potentially prickly team atmosphere with a knee injury that is likely to keep him out of next month's world road championships.

O'Grady was named Thursday in the Australian's men's team for the September 21-25 Madrid world championships, but a Cycling Australia spokesperson said Friday that his season was over because of knee tendonitis.

O’Grady has withdrawn from this week's Vuelta España because of the injury.

O'Grady’s frosty relationship with fellow Australian Robbie McEwen (Davitamon-Lotto) took a turn for the worse after their bumping duel in the finish of stage three at the Tour de France.

McEwen finished third in the sprint but was relegated to the back of the peloton after Tour race officials ruled he had barged his way past O'Grady of the Cofidis squad.

McEwen appeared to lean heavily into O'Grady several times but he later explained he was only doing so to try and stop himself from falling over.

Reports earlier in the weeksaid O'Grady would decline to ride at the world road championships because of his feud with McEwen.

O'Grady would normally be a first-choice selection for the world championships if fit, meaning Cycling Australia officials were facing a tough task to have their strongest-possible men's team ride in Madrid.

Cycling Australia also will most likely not have to deal with the McEwen-O'Grady feud ahead of next year's Melbourne Commonwealth Games, although there may be a conflicting clash with events in Europe at that time.

McEwen will be Australia' team leader in the road race, where Michael Rogers will also aim for another individual time trial title.

Vuelta hematocrit test eliminates Laguna
Two days before the start of the Vuelta a España, UCI officials conducted the standard hematocrit tests on each of the 198 riders slated to participate in the three-week grand tour.

On Thursday morning, officials visited the hotels of each of the 22 teams taking part in the Vuelta. Oscar Laguna, a rider on the wild-card Relax-Fuenlabrada squad, was deemed to be "unfit" to ride, having produced a sample with a hematocrit higher than the allowable 50 percent.

The UCI established the hematocrit test in 1997 as a means of controlling what was then the completely unmonitored use of EPO. Despite the development of a urine test in 2000, the UCI has continued to use the hematocrit test as a means of monitoring the manipulation of red-blood-cell counts. A high hematocrit test is not considered to be proof of a doping violation, but is widely regarded as an indication of EPO use or other forms of manipulation.

The Relax team is not allowed to move another rider into the Vuelta slot of a team member ordered not to ride because of a hematocrit or doping test.