Ben Swift (Team Sky) hasn’t raced for three months, but he’s not letting that dampen his ambition of tasting victory at the RideLondon-Surrey Classic on Sunday.
Though he won a stage of the Settimana Internazionale Coppi e Bartali in March, the British rider’s season was derailed when he pulled out of the Vuelta al País Vasco due to fatigue and then crashed out on the opening day of the Tour de Yorkshire - a race based in his home region. That crash left him needing shoulder surgery but the recovery has gone smoothly and he is now looking to make up for the disappointment of last year’s RideLondon, where he was narrowly edged out in the sprint by Adam Blythe.
"It’s always disappointing to be beaten by such a thin margin, but if there was anyone I’d have taken to be beaten by last year, it would have been Adam because he’s a really good friend. I’d love to put that right this time around, but we’ll just have to see what happens. There are a lot of variables this year, and one-day racing is always hard to predict, but we’ll give it a good go," Swift told the Team Sky website.
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"I’ll follow whatever the team instructions are for me, and we’ll discuss those between now and the start of the race. We’ve got a very strong team – one which is very sprint focused with CJ [Sutton], Elia [Viviani] and Andy [Fenn] all there with me – but I’ll certainly be looking to ride an aggressive race, and if the opportunity arises, I’ll obviously try and take it.
"I’m excited to get stuck in, and to see how I feel in that race environment after such a long spell on the sidelines. That’s always so hard to predict and I’m looking forward to seeing what the sensations are."
Swift’s fall at the Tour de Yorkshire was the latest in a string of shoulder injuries that have beset the 27-year-old’s career in recent years. He damaged his right shoulder at the 2012 Giro d’Italia and after surgery in the winter he re-injured it early in 2013, which forced him to cut short his season. This latest blow is the third time in a few years that he has gone under the knife on that shoulder.
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