Fabian Cancellara (Trek Factory Racing) is in action at the Tour de Suisse and his national tour ends with a time trial in his hometown of Bern. However, the self-proclaimed Spartacus of cycling is focused on recovery and finding fitness rather than results, after fracturing a vertebra in a crash during the E3 Harelbeke race late in March.
Cancellara missed the cobbled Classics and only returned to racing late last month at the Tour des Fjords in Norway. With the Tour de France looming large on the horizon, Cancellara is happy to be back racing despite a virus hurting his training just before the Tour de Suisse. At 34, he can also feel that the clock is ticking on his career and has no intention of racing for years to come.
"At first I was just happy to ride my bike again but after you’ve trained, trained and trained, you need to race," Cancellara said in an interview with Swiss television channel RSI. "That’s why I decided to race in Norway. Racing gave me those good feeling and quality work that you don’t get in training or even when motor pacing. Things like the first hour of a race, when the break is trying to go away and you’re trying to control the attacks, you can’t recreate those efforts in training.
ADVERTISEMENT
"It’s not the season I’d hoped for because, after missing the Classics, there’s a big hole. I’m riding the Tour de Suisse with conviction but I got ill before the race and that cut into my training and was a mental blow too. I’ve had to take antibiotics and so everything changed. As a result, I’m going to take whatever comes and we’ll see what happens."
A roller coaster ride in recent years
Cancellara has had a rollercoaster ride in recent years. He has been a dominated presence in the Classics for almost a decade but crashed out of the Tour of Flanders in 2012 and missed Paris-Roubaix. In 2013 he returned to win both monument Classics and won a third Tour of Flanders in 2014. He was hopeful of adding more monuments to his palmarès this season but his crash in E3 Harelbeke has cost him dearly, and he is now chasing his form in time for the Tour de France in the middle of his 16th season as a professional.
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest News http://ift.tt/1Gs34K5
No comments:
Post a Comment