“I’m not a bad bike rider, to be fair,” Mark Cavendish said on Sunday afternoon and it was hard to quibble with that assessment after a Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne victory that saw him showcase his range and put a rather brighter sheen on his Etixx-QuickStep team’s Opening Weekend.
Cavendish’s winning sprint on the Brugsesteenweg had the feel of a dress rehearsal for the Via Roma three weeks from now, as he overhauled Alexander Kristoff (Katusha) and held off Elia Viviani (Sky) to claim his seventh win of the new season. He may take just as much heart, however, from the fact that he had the legs to make what had seemed like the race-winning selection over the top of the Oude Kwaremont with 70 kilometres till to race.
Along with Kristoff and Viviani, Cavendish was among the 19 riders who spent 30 kilometres off the front of the race, but the presence of four of his Etixx-QuickStep teammates in the move meant that he had the relative luxury of following the wheels. The selection, forced by Tom Boonen, was a very public response to the team’s disastrous handling of the finale at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad on Saturday.
ADVERTISEMENT
“I’m not a bad bike rider and I’m in by far the strongest team,” Cavendish said. “You saw that yesterday too. Ok, it was a bit of a fuck up in the end but it was still a big show of strength by the team yesterday and it was the same today. After being caught, to be able to change the tables and commit 100 percent to the sprint was great you know.”
Cavendish, of course, sat out Omloop in preparation for Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne and he was unwilling to dwell on the question when the local press asked for his assessment of how Boonen, Stijn Vandenbergh and Niki Terpstra had contrived to cede victory to Ian Stannard (Sky) on Saturday.
“Yesterday I was sat on my bed watching it so I can’t really talk about it,” Cavendish said, though he added that the mood in the team’s base at the Kennedy Hotel in Kortrijk was about as upbeat as it could have been in the circumstances.
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest News http://ift.tt/1DrlvdB
No comments:
Post a Comment