Milram 2007: A season of highs and lows
By Susan Westemeyer The sport of cycling had an extraordinarily turbu🅘lent year full of highs and..🗹.
By Susan Westemeyer
The sport of cycling had an extraordinarily turbulent year full of highs and lows in 2007, and one team which rode the waves from peak to trough was Team Milram. The team s𓆉ailed on the shoulders of its one man show, sprinter Alessandro Petacchi, who took a massive 17 of the team's 25 wins into the h🐲eart of the spectre of doping, which swept through the entire peloton, not sparing the Italian-German squad.
Petacchi, in betwee🐎n wins, spent time under suspension for a 'non-negative' test, while its other sprinter Erik Zabel tearfully confessed to EPO use in 1996. Even the team management came under fire, as team mꦅanager Gianluigi Stanga was accused of having introduced a young Jörg Jaksche to doping in the mid-90s.
The ꧙team's star sprinter, 'Ale-Jet' Petacchi went into the season with full force after an injury-plagued 2006, winning the for the third year in a row. After being relegated in the stage of the Volta ao Algarve, he went on to win the , and stages, as well as the overall title. He was unable to hold the good form for , where he faded to eighth in the final sprint.
Other Milram riders had success in the early season as well. Mirco Lorenzetto brought in his first pro vi♛ctory in the early part of the year, winning a stage in the to nab one of only three wins all season by a rider other than Petacchi or Zabel. Former World Champion Igor Astarloa, who had been in as a third team captain, finished third in a of that same race, for his highest finish in a disappointing season. Over the summer he was with toxoplasmosis and missed much of the season.
In contrast to its s▨trong start, Milram's Spring Classics were a bit of a disaster as the team was struck🌃 by an unbelievable streak of injuries and illness. With the exception of Marcel Sieberg's second-place finish behind Tom Boonen in , the team failed to score after much of the team succumbed to injury or illness.
Fabio Sacchi and Marco Velo fell victim to the "Slaughter on the Kemmelberg" at . Elia Rigotto, Volodymyr Dyudya, Alberto Ongarato and Fabio Sabatini also had to miss races due to crash injuries, while Dennis Haueisen underwent stomach surgery. Even "Iron m💧an" Zabel had to Gent-Wevelgem and Paris-Roubaix after out of the Ronde van Vlaanderen.
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Things began to look up again in April, as Petacchi once again put his stamp on the International Niꩲedersachsen Rundfahrt. He was unable♌ to win all five stages as he did year, but won the , and stages to take the overall win.
The wins gave him confidence heading into the Giro d'Italia, where he proved to himself and to the world that he had fully recovered from his injuries of the previous 🐓season. He won the stage and burst into tears of joy. He followed it up with wins in the , , and stages, also taking home the best sprinter's jersey.
Milram falls on hard times
Following the team's highest h🧸ighs came the team's lowest of lows. It started with Erik Zabel's tearful which understandably was met with by his team. His future with the team appeared to be in , although finally an was met to let him stay. He then went on to win two stages in the .
But worse was to come. In 💎mid-June, three 'non-negative' tests from the Giro were and one of them was Petacchi, who had shown traces of Salbutamol, an asthma medication. Although he has an exemption to use the medication, his levels were above the legal limit for the drug, and the team was 🦋forced to him the end of June until his case could be reviewed by CONI, causing him to miss the Tour de France.
A further blow was dealt to team management when Jörg Jaksche the Spiegel magazine that Stanga had introduced him to EPO while at൩ Team Polti in 1997. Stanga the charges, but the damage had been done.
With Petacchi absence, the team wasn't able to accomplish much in the Tour. Sieberg the red numbers of the most aggressive rider for one day, and Zabel was able to "his" green jersey for one day, ✤but it gained no stage wins during the Tour.
The Vuelta was more successful, mainly due to Petacchi's return to the peloton. Zabel took one and Petacchi in a row. The speedy Italian then closed the season on a hꦅigh note, w𓆉inning .
The season's turmoil wasn't over, though. The decision to keep Zabel wasn't until November, after he💜 had indicated the possibility of to T-Mobile. And in a big♔ger change, the team announced that it had bought out the contract with general manager Stanga and that business manager Gerry van Gerwen would the new manager, with the team license from Italian to German.
