Following his bad crash in the Tour de Suisse that wrecked the middle third of his season, Robert Gesink (LottoNL-Jumbo) says he is "just happy to be racing" in the Vuelta a España.
That deceptively low-key goal hides a dramatic back story. The 30-year-old crashed out on stage 2 of the Tour de Suisse, suffering a severe concussion. Indeed, after numerous false starts, it was only in early August, first at the Tour de L'Ain and then the Vuelta, that the Dutch rider could really start to say with confidence that he is now on a slow but steady start to recovery. Even so, the damage from Suisse was such that the most Gesink had been able to train continuously prior to the Vuelta was a scant three days in a row.
"I'm just happy to be racing, I hope to finish the Vuelta to have a good base level for 2017. I had a difficult time after the crash in Suisse. Concussion really takes a lot of energy out of you, and I couldn't train for a long time, and I was tired a lot of the time," Gesink, sixth in the 2015 Tour de France, tells Cyclingnews during the Vuelta's first week.
ADVERTISEMENT
"Before this, I trained for three days in a row and that was the longest I could do. So I did one race [the Tour de L'Ain, finishing 21st overall - Ed.] for four days in August, and now I'm here in the Vuelta. I'm pretty happy that I'm still recovering. Because that was the issue before - I just couldn't recover from normal training."
A finisher inside the top seven three times in the Vuelta, the first time back in 2008 when he took seventh in his first ever Grand Tour, Gesink had hoped to work for teammate Steven Kruijswijk in the third week.
Instead, as he says ruefully "not that's necessary," after Kruijswijk crashed out on stage 5 with a broken collarbone. Rather than working for another top result in the Vuelta following his fourth place in the Giro, the two are reduced to exchanging text messages of support and medical updates.
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest News http://ift.tt/2bKf0Bf
No comments:
Post a Comment