After seeing his star rider Alberto Contador destroy a deficit of almost 50 seconds before the Mortirolo to catch and then pass Fabio Aru half way up the fabled climb, Oleg Tinkov says that Astana and Katusha showed no class when they upped the pace after Contador had a puncture on the lead-in to the climb.

“I told Oleg on the phone that race radio didn’t announce that Contador had punctured. I just heard that one of the Astana riders had stopped – whether it was because of a fall or not, I don’t know. But I didn’t expect that Contador would lose Aru’s wheel [on the descent],” Russian Katusha DS Dimitri Konychev said to Cyclingnews.

“We knew that there was a bad, bad descent after Aprica and we went to the front to set our own tempo and we managed to get up to the front group that changed the race a bit because Contador wasn’t up there. In the end, we rode our race and Astana rode theirs. It went well for us. Trofimov rode well and moved up to fifth overall.”

Stage winner Mikel Landa of Astana admitted in his post-race press conference that his team went hard to make Contador suffer.

“We went hard on the flat before the Mortirolo to make it hard for Contador, so that he might be a little more tired when he caught us,” Landa said in his press conference. “We saw that Contador had a problem, and we tried to take advantage of it. I believe that we caused him some pain to catch us. Katusha broke up the group and went full gas, and we collaborated with them.”

Tinkov says that the leaders jersey was respected more ten years ago than it was now. He previously got on well at Katusha, as he started the team before Igor Makarov took over and finished the creation of the project. He has never got on well with Astana.

“I don’t want to say too much but I think there was much more respect for the maglia rosa five or 10 years ago. Now when the leader punctures, they attack; when the leader crashes, they attack,” Tinkov told Cyclingnews after praising his riders at the Tinkoff-Saxo team bus.
 

“It’s up to the fans to say if there was fair play from the Astana and Katusha team. Maybe I’m wrong but I’ll be happy to hear what the Astana and Katusha fans have to say about it on Twitter.” 

Tinkov says that the move has backfired, as now everyone can see that Contador is visibly stronger than anyone else and he has dealt a crushing moral blow to Katusha and Astana.

“I don’t understand what they were hoping to do by being 40 seconds ahead at the start of the Mortirolo. Alberto was by far the strongest guy here… I don’t think Astana and Katusha showed any class,” he said.
 

“We were a little bit pissed off and angry with what happened, but then we just followed Alberto from the car as he picked up as many minutes as possible on the others. It was good to watch. Alberto showed he’s a great champion and showed that he’s the boss here.”