Iban interview

I decided to translate a whole interview with Iban from Spanish to English just for you. It`s a lot of work, so I hope you`ll enjoy it. Read on to find out more about Iban`s Tour preparations, his form, his ambitions etc. From El Correo:

• El Correo: You go to the Tour this year on the back of a stage-win in the Giro. Are you more relaxed this year compared to other years?
• Iban: Yeah, that win gave me desire to keep on doing my job. To win in this sport gives you a lot of illusions, so my moral is definetely intact.
• El Correo: Is that one of your objectives in the Tour? To win another stage?
• Iban: Yes. I finished the Giro feeling fresh, and I want to do the same in the Tour. I know that if I win a stage, I`ve done a good race. It`s necessary to wait for, and to take advantage of, that day (when it`s possible for me to win).
• El Correo: Have you stopped riding for the GC?
• Iban: Yes, I have. I prefer to go for stages. In the Giro, I could perhaps have ended up among the 15 best, but at the end of the day it`s more important to win a stage. It`s got more importance. Who remembers the name of the rider in fourth place? The fans and the spectators remember the riders who win in the mountains. In addition, if you go for a high overall placing, you can lose it all on one bad day.
• El Correo: Your team, Saunier Duval, arrives at the Tour with more than 20 victories so far already this season. The team has kind of done it all, they`ve done more than expected.
• Iban: In the Giro, Simoni was the unquestionable leader. However, for the Tour we don`t have a candidate for the overall. Because of that, we go to the Tour with a different mentality. We`ll go for stage-wins. With Millar, we have a great chance of winning the prologue. The rest of us will try to be protagonists, like De La Fuente was last year.
• El Correo: In last year`s Tour, you abandoned in Viella, on the stage which ended on the Plá de Beret. Is it still difficult and hard to think about it?
• Iban: Man, the retirement affected me a lot then. It hurt. I felt very down. But, I came back. Now I go the Tour with different illusions.
• El Correo: Is that the badest memory of last year`s race?
• Iban: Yes, it was surely the badest. I felt good coming in to the Tour, but it all went bad. I could not keep up with the pace. It was the same that had happened in other editions of the Tour. I`ve thought a lot about it. I know that I can`t get any worse than that, so no matter what I do this time around, it can only get better.
• El Correo: What does the psychological element in cycling mean to you?
• Iban: It affects me. When things go badly.... The confidence is fundamental. When I feel good, I try to be a protagonist and to hunt for stages. But when I`m bad, yeah, perhaps I get a little down. I`m a fighter on the bike.
• El Correo: What`s changed since you turned pro in 2000?
• Iban: A lot. Now the pressure affects me. And I value more and more the people who are always with me. I see everything more tranquillo. You learn that some people you like, and some people you don`t.
• El Correo: Have you noticed less support than earlier when you rode for Euskaltel?
• Iban: People support me just as much. Nobody has ever said anything about me leaving Euskaltel. I know that Euskaltel is like Athletic (Bilbao). It`s the local team. But in cycling the fans are more dedicated to riders than to teams. The ones who supported me before, support me now.
• El Correo: Are you the rider you hoped to become?
• Iban: I`ve won more races and done greater things than I ever thought was possible when I started out. When I made my debut as a pro, the others were much better than me. But then suddenly I started winning races I never even thought about winning. But, is`s true, when I won those big races, I saw myself winning things I haven`t been able to win. But, right now, I`m content with my palmarès. I`ve won more than I thought I would.
• El Correo: There`s one win missing though; a stage in the Pyrenees in front of the fans.
• Iban: Yeah, that`s true. If I won a stage in the Pyrenees, I could have retired straight away being happy with what I`ve done. Years ago, people spoke of me as a future Tour winner. But I can`t do it. For that reason, a stage-win would make me happy.
• El Correo: Especially if you win the stage that crosses the border into Navarra, the stage with the Larrau and the Aubisque.
• Iban: That`s true. I went to see that stage, and to ride parts of it. It`s the hardest stage of the Tour. The Larrau is a terrible climb. You suffer. It wouldn`t be bad if I was a protagonist there. I feel better now than in the Giro, but I guess everyone is feeling good coming in to the Tour. The competition will be harder here than in the Giro.
• El Correo: The Tour started last year with the exclusions of Mancebo, Ullrich, Basso, Astana and Sevilla. Though, it turned out to be a spectacular race with unexpected twists. The spectators again felt captivated by the racing. But, the bad thing happened three days after the race came to an end, as Landis returned a positive test.
• Iban: Yeah, people like to see races like last year`s Tour. It`s not interesting with a totally dominating rider. The spectators prefer to see riders failing, and then returning. I like that kind of racing. Last year`s race was attractive to watch, with entertaining riders.
• El Correo: Like Iban Mayo...
• Iban: The good thing is that there are several rider with a chance to win. The viewers like to see that the riders are human beings after all, as that`s a great spectacle. When it comes to me... It`s good for the show that the riders have to go through bad moments, but when it happens to me, they`re perhaps too bad.

Iban further talked a bit about the state cycling is in at the moment, and that everyone is to blame for it really. He`s concerned about the future of cycling, and the last thing he said was: "The truth is that I see a quite dark future for our sport".