Motivation can be at a premium in the peloton at this late juncture in the season, but Marco Haller (Katusha-Alpecin) was not suffering from any dearth of enthusiasm when he rolled up to sign on for stage 1 of the Tour of Guangxi in Beihai on Tuesday.
For many, the Chinese WorldTour race is simply one more fixture in an already crowded calendar. For Haller, who is making his first competitive outing since the training crash last April that left him with a broken kneecap and placed his career at risk, the week represents something else altogether.
"I was just away for half a year, but I still feel like a kid before the first day at school. I'm pretty nervous but excited," Haller told Cyclingnews before the start on Tuesday.
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The Austrian made the day's early break, won the opening intermediate sprint, and finished safely in the main peloton as Dylan Groenewegen (LottoNL-Jumbo) landed stage victory.
From a purely physical point of view, the six-day block of racing here in China will make little material difference to Haller's condition at the start of the 2019 season. From a psychological standpoint, however, this brief re-immersion course in the rough and tumble mode of communication of the peloton is priceless. A long winter has already been shortened considerably.
Haller had initially targeted a return at the Tour of Turkey earlier this month before a bout of appendicitis saw the event scratched from his schedule, but nothing, it seemed, could dissuade him from lining out in Guangxi.
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via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/like-a-big-horror-movie-marco-hallers-roller-coaster-ride-back-to-the-peloton
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