After a successful Giro d’Italia campaign which saw Mark Cavendish nearly claim the points jersey and Rigoberto Uran Uran claiming the young riders prize, controversy has struck the Team Sky camp with rumors surfacing that allege young Uran to actually be 40 years old.
Uran Uran's age has come into question with evidence coming from South America to RCS Sport (photo courtesy of Bettini photo via cyclingnews.com)
“We have received documentation from sources in South America that puts the validity of the documentation presented by Team Sky into doubt. This, coupled with the physical evidence we requested from photographer Jered Gruber, has given rise to an investigation to see if we have wrongly given out the young riders classification jersey to a seasoned Colombian veteran,” commented RCS Sport representative Luca Paolini.
One of the evidential photos showing Uran's body composition as similar to almost 40 year-old George Hincapie (photo courtesy of Jered Gruber)
Team Sky representatives were incensed at the implication that Uran Uran was significantly older than the 25 years they have stated him to be. Team boss David Brailsford offered his comments on the situation.
“I’ve had enough of the vipers trying to take shots at our winning programme. Look, Wiggins is following Millar’s programme in Tenerife, which is supposed to make the peace. There are journalists running around accusing my star of being on everything from HGH to EPO to AICAR and some sort of diet shakes, and now we have these fucking muppets chasing after Old Man Uran. It’s ridiculous,” declared Brailsford, “Frankly, it doesn’t fucking matter since Henao finished second in the competition, so we’ll win the fucking jersey anyways. Fucking wankers.”
We wanted to continue our questions to the Team Sky boss, but instead he chose to tell us to “pound sand” before he went off to buy another carton of cigarettes.
Andrea Berton, commentator for Gazzetta during the Giro, expressed his concern about the controversy.
“The Colombians aren’t known for keeping accurate records. Who’s to say that he isn’t 40 or 35 or 30 or 25? I will admit he doesn’t really have the spring chicken look of say a Vincenzo Nibali, or an Andrea Guardini, or a Peter Sagan. It might just be indicative of the hard life you have in the mountains of the South American region where you pick coffee, cocoa leaves, or flies,” commented Berton.
RCS Sport has requested Uran Uran’s long form birth certificate from the Colombian government to put the controversy to rest. It will remain to be seen which Sky rider will be receiving the hallowed Maglia Bianca upon review of the documentation.
