DFA123 said:
A lot of personal insults towards Tinkov in the last couple of pages here, looks a bit unedifying and I dont think people should lower themselves to his level of language by responding in kind. Would be much more interesting to find out what is his motivation for all this bile.
Tinkov knows Contador personally better than everyone on this forum I guess, so he's in a better position to make character judgements than any of us - positive or negative. And if you look beyond his ridiculous insults, he's obviously very bitter and angry about something Contador did (or perhaps didn't do) - it seems to me from his tweets that he feels Contador didn't integrate himself in the team and remained a bit aloof. Something that would re-inforce the view that the team split last year when Majka and Kreuziger seemed luke-warm in their support towards him. Hopefully, for Contador, he can do this better at Trek and get the team to really buy into his TdF hopes - because with the likes of Degenkolb, Felline, Mollema and possibly Pantano they have riders who may have half an eye or more on their own goals if Contador doesn't lead them 100% effectively.
Sometime early on, Tinkov was complaining on Twitter about Contador being rude to OT's wife at a race. I don't know the exact details, but I got the impression maybe she tried to speak to AC, but he blew her off or just spoke to her only briefly. I had the impression that maybe Contador was just getting ready to race, or had just finished, and she was at the team area and tried to talk to him. Oleg was pissed and complained about it for a while afterwards on Twitter.
Now, understandably OT supports his wife, and I guess he thought of AC as a highly paid employee who needed to show more deference to the boss' family. Whereas AC is the star athlete, and usually those guys are coddled at races and not given any complaints about anything, because it's all about the preparation and mindset for the sporting event at hand. I don't even know if AC knew it was Tinkov's wife or just maybe thought it was another sponsor person.
From the outside looking in, I see two things. One is that Oleg and Alberto are just way different personalities and never going to be best friends, especially when having to spend a lot of time together. They'd probably get along better if they were only acquaintances who only saw each other in small doses on rare occasions. Just two different personality types.
And two, Oleg spent a lot of time at the races, especially stage races. He'd spent his money, and it was his right to be there to embed with his team and enjoy his toy, but it must've weighed on the guys to constantly have to entertain and defer to the boss. Oleg was there a lot, and sometimes brought along other people from his bank for brief visits, etc.
Grand Tours just go on and on, and with crowds and stress and sponsor commitments and press, etc there's plenty to wear a person down outside of the actual racing. Away from family, no free time at all. And Oleg was around at dinner, hanging around the hotel and the bus, etc. It was probably intrusive - doubly so for a person who might be more introverted. When normally a rider would get a chance to decompress after the races turns out to be time to have to take selfies with the boss and sing songs at the dinner table. It was too much.
And that's just coming from OT wanting to hang with the guys, not counting the pressure from Oleg to produce results. I can imagine that Contador may have just tried to shut himself off from Oleg somewhat and that this was resented. After all, Oleg pays his salary and is used to running a business. But a sports team doesn't quite work the same way as regular employees. And Oleg does follow and adore the sport. He probably admired Contador a lot before they actually knew each other personally. So you pay a bunch of money and get disappointed because things didn't turn out like you had hoped.
I think there was resentment from early on, and it sounds from the tweets like it's still there.