Natnael Berhane (MTN-Qhubeka) is hoping a sleepless night will not hold him back in his bid to win the Tour of Turkey for a second time.
The Eritrean rider, while at Europcar, finished second in the 2013 race but was retrospectively bumped up after winner Mustafa Sayar tested positive for EPO a couple of months later.
While Theo Bos and Youcef Reguigui try their hands in the sprints, MTN-Qhubeka are backing Berhane for another overall win, but things got off to a terrible start as a nightmare journey meant he arrived at the race just an hour before the start of the first stage.
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“I started from Pisa on Saturday afternoon but I was delayed a lot of times,” Berhane told Cyclingnews ahead of stage 2. “When I arrived in Istanbul they said they would have the plane [to Antalya] at 1:30am but we were waiting again for 2 hours 30 until 4am. Then another one-hour delay before we got on the plane.”
After a short internal flight of just over an hour, Berhane and his panicked team staff were tasked with getting him from the airport in Antalya to the hotel near the stage start in Alanya, 165km down the southwestern coast.
“I came to the hotel at 9.30am [with sign-on at 10.30], I took a shower and breakfast and went to the start,” said the 24-year-old. “It was a long day and a long night. I didn’t sleep the whole time and I went straight to race.
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
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