For those thinking that beards were useful as a disguise for increasing your anonymity, think again. According to German Simon Geschke, the Giant-Alpecin rider who won at Pra Loup in the Tour de France rider claims, his facial hair has had precisely the opposite effect.
“I feel I definitely get it [more recognition from the Tour stage], but the biggest reason is the beard,” Geschke told Cyclingnews before the last stage of the Vuelta a Andalucia - in which, as he put it later on Twitter, he was “in the break, crashed and then finished second last. Haven’t been bored all day.”
“It [the memory of his beard] got stuck in people’s heads, I was apparently on the TV a lot on that Tour stage, and people remember me because of it.” Indeed, if you google search “Simon Geschke beard” it pulls up a whopping 1,940,000 results. Take away “beard”, however, and it drops to 42,200!
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With or without facial hair - when talking to Cyclingnews the German’s beard is its usual elegant trim - Geschke says his season’s objectives are very similar to 2015. “I’ll be focussing on a really good result in the Amstel Gold Race, which was also the plan last year but then I broke my collarbone in Tirreno-Adriatico. So the goals remain the same, definitely the Ardennes Classics and I hope to do the Tour and the Olympics.”
His winter, the 29-year-old says, “was not great. I started a little bit later, but for now, I’m on a good level. I was struggling with some knee problems, two times this winter so I couldn’t really train like I wanted. I didn’t lose too much, so I’m trying to be on the right track until April.”
If Geschke is playing a little catch-up at the moment, Giant-Alpecin as a whole were collectively de-railed in a far more serious way – the team was involved training crash when a car hit their training group early this year - which has seen the depleted squad pull out of Omloop Het Nieuwsblad on Saturday. As Geschke says “It’s not easy, we’ve had to change the race program and of course for the riders it’s the worst thing that can happen, to have a crash like in the early season and break something.
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
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