I asked him about UCI President Pat McQuaid saying Rock was good for the sport, but that he maybe shouldn’t have signed guys implicated in Puerto (Tyler Hamilton, Oscar Sevilla, Santiago Botero) and that he should have worked within the cycling establishment. I asked him to address what McQuaid said.

“I understand that and I respect that coming from Pat. I don’t want to get into the whole thing about the guys that have questionable pasts. There’s a whole lot of guys in the peloton who have questionable pasts. I think it’s a new day, and I think the sport is cleaner today than it ever has been. The guys get it. The team owners get it. Obviously, the promoters get it. We have to continue to clean it up. It will continue to be cleaner. You can’t villify these guys or anybody in the peloton for what may or may not have happened in the past. You have to focus on today and move forward.

“As far as working within the parameters of the cycling world, to a certain degree I understand, but I think it’s more important in today’s world to promote something and push the boundaries so you bring in new interest and make it sexy. You bring in more eyeballs, which ultimately more dollars and new dollars that will help grow this sport.  That’s what’s needed more than saying, ‘Well, should I have signed this person or that person?’ I don’t think that’s what the focus should be on. The focus should be on: We all get it. The sport’s cleaner than it ever has been. It’s going to get even cleaner. Now let’s focus on how we’re going to make this sport bigger from a business perspective.”

I asked how he thought his team would do in Georgia.

“I’m so excited to finally see these guys compete. The intention was for these guys to compete against these exact same guys at the Tour of California, and then compete again to create this story. They have a fantastic opportunity to win some stages and to win this race. I feel very, very confident and very positive these guys can do it. If Alberto Contador comes over, and he and Levi (of Astana) , it will be mano-a-mano against Seville and Botero. It’ll be a wonderful race, great for the fans, great the team owners and great for the sport. I look foward to it.

“You can even put it into the context of Astana and the Tour de France, Rock Racing and the Tour of California, you can have that whole thing. There are so many ways to spin it. I think it will be an awesome thing we’ll get to witness over the next week and a half.”

NOTE: Contador is not on Astana’s roster. Also, dude could be a sportwriter, with his correlation of the un-vitations experienced by Astana from the Tour de France and Rock’s Puerto 3 at the Tour of Cali. 

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