San Millán and Astana/Brajkovic

[Nilsson]

Thanks Nilsson! Great detail in that post. Appreciated.

You're right, I haven't been able to put much research into this. The facts are that SM has worked closely with a couple of dope DSs and with a couple of caught dopers and at present continues to work closely with at least one caught doper (Sutherland, at UHC) and with Brajkovic, a (former) Bruyneel/Armstrong protégé. Also, he worked with Celaya at ONCE for two years (2002/03), and rather closely with Lim at Garmin (and beyond). And we still don't know who the TdF winner is that stars on San Millan's palmares (or the 16 GT podium finishers).

I don't know who he counts as his (official) clientele, but he has worked with a lot of big (mostly Spanish) riders. In the sense that he has been involved in physiological testing, even Indurain, not the day-to-day training work etc.

San Millan is the testing guy. I think almost no one has as much data and knowledge in that department. He is the guy that fine tuned tests, so that they were suitable to discover climbing talent in the lab. He did that with Joseba Beloki, who didn't come out very good in the traditional lab tests but was good on the road. San Millan is also a leader in combining aerodynamics and metabolism (lactate build up in aerodynamic positions for example) and has done great work in the Garmin team the short period he was there. The results are obvious.

More generally regarding Garmin: as one poster in another thread said, it would be revealing to learn why teams have so many docs on board with roughly the same expertise. Garmin in 2009 had ISM, Gonzalez Haro, and Mark Quod, (not counting Lim, who is not really a doc, but was at Garmin in 2009). Those are 3 guys with roughly the same qualifications. Is that necessary?

You have a lot of riders, a lot of testing/monitoring and a lot of racing to do in a lot of different places. Also they aren't always working (totally) exclusively for just one team. They often work with other individuals, have their own practice, work at a university, hospital or sports federation, etc. Having that much specialists on a team isn't weird if you really want to do a good job (on an individual rider basis). There are also people like Shannon Sovndal, Serge Niamke and Robby Ketchell who also do a great job at their departments.

 

[Nilsson]

2010/2011 to be correct.

He had already done work for the team since 2008, mainly preseason testing at training camps and being a sounding board for Lim, I believe.

What interests me the most is why Brajkovic isn't doing his testing within his own team, doesn't he think Andreazzoli, Pallini and Uliari are trustworthy enough?

I have heard Specialized is a big reason for that. Roman Kreuziger does the same work with Neal Henderson, also Colorado based.