The departure of Fabian Cancellara was always going to leave quite a gap in Trek-Segafredo’s classics arsenal, and so it’s proving, with directeur sportif Dirk Demol pining to see his current riders show some of the aggression and killer instinct that characterised the three-time Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix winner.
Speaking to Cyclingnews in Zottegem on Wednesday, ahead of the second stage of the Three Days of De Panne, Demol gave a frank assessment of his team’s showings thus far this spring, saying, "the results at this point are not good enough."
John Degenkolb, a replacement of sorts for Cancellara, finished seventh at Milan-San Remo, in the bunch behind the three leaders and – after missing the splits at E3-Harelbeke – it was a similar tale at Gent-Wevelgem on Sunday, where he was fifth from the main bunch. Meanwhile Jasper Stuyven is yet to build on the promise of his Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne victory last year, abandoning E3-Harelbeke on a“off-day” before finishing 46th at Gent-Wevelgem.
ADVERTISEMENT
“I was hoping for better, to be honest. I’m going to support my boys 100 per cent, but we didn’t have the results we could have had,” Demol told Cyclingnews.
“We always analyse the races, and we’ve seen on a couple of occasions that they may not be aggressive enough at the right times. We’ve had five WorldTour one-day races, and I’m sure we could be there but we weren’t because we were maybe thinking ‘it’s still too far’ or we had that one second of doubt.
“I’ve told them who’s going to go, they just had to follow one guy, and they didn’t. I’ve seen it in the race, they sometimes have that one second of doubt, and it’s one second too much. If the big guys go, you cannot think ‘should I try to go with him or not?’ You’re already too late.”
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest News http://ift.tt/2nQFsO2
No comments:
Post a Comment