News
Fleche de Sud Stage 3
19. May 2012
Hihi! Allright, I trained for this stage race all season and I went in it with high expectations but going out with a victory on queen stage hasn’t bee on my agenda... Actually I was really scared of this stage before. We went for a recon of the parcour the week before the Flèche started and I was short before entering the team car after 70 K’s. The three to four kilometer long climbs and the plateau with the false-flat and a lot of wind killed my legs on that training day...
But coming to the race now! Our team strategy was attacking from the beginning of the 154 K’s long stage to put the other strong teams under pressure. At first, this didn’t work out to well but after the first climb we worked out really good as a team. And when we entered the false-flat area on the plateau, the sidewind bordure formed a headgroup of about 15 riders consisting Alex Pliushin and me.
At that time the leader Steensen was still in the peloton and Bob also. So we – Alex and I – decided to not ride in the front for the group. This way, we were escorted to the finishline without doing work and plus, we didn’t work against our Leader Bob who was coming from behind.
Bob made a great effort, starting from the peloton with five minutes to bridge! This effort is even more astonishing when you know that he was almost in our group and then went the wrong direction...
In my group, the natural selection began. With 110 K’s and about 1900m of Altitude on the SRM, rider started to suffer. For some reason, I didn’t suffer that much and I saw that today! With twenty kilometers to the finishline, Lasse Bochman (winner 2010&2011) attacked and it was me, former Giro stage winner Jure Golcer,Stefan Coenen from Differdange and a rider from the Qubekah team who were still able to follow. Alex Pliushin stood on the back with the rest of the former group of about 28 riders. My group worked out descent but not too good. We were caught back shortly before the last long climb of four kilometers. Bob had finally entered the group of Alex Pliushin and now they were closing the gap to my group with the two dangerous guys Golcer and Bochmann.
Golcer attacked in the beginning of the climb and I knew I had to pull to close this gap again for Bob. I went at a constant speed, not letting Golcer away more than 10 seconds. I knewm that way I hurt his moral. He kept looking back to us and shortly before the end of the climb, he was finished. I accelerated once more an caught him back.
The situation now was three Leopards in a group of eight riders. Obviously the strategy was now alternate attacking of my team. With only one rider from the other teams in the group, nobody would feel responsible for pursuiting the escaping Leopard.
I attacked, but soon had the other riders on my wheels again. Than Alex tried, but also didn’t form a gap.
And than, there was the moment. Riders taking deep breaths and looking at eachother.
I put in all the remaining power in my body for this attack and I hit the bullseye. Soon I had a gap of 10 seconds and on the following 2,5k’s fals flat it rose to 20 seconds. On the following descent I was able to take some deep breaths again before entering the famous Wiltzer-Knupp, a damn steep 800 meter long wall!
I’m so on cloud nine right now! I expanded the gap on the Knupp to 46 seconds on the group and won the stage!!!!!! My first UCI victory and such a nice one!!!!!
Thank you to all the people who believe in me and who helped me and also thank you to all my teammates who are just in a great shape right now! We’re going to rock this Flèche!!!!!!!
Flèche de Sud Stage 2
18. May 2012
The second stage of the Fleche de Sud was almost as predicted. After some 30 kilometers of attacking a group escaped consisting of two Glud Marstrand riders as well as one Drapac, Tyrol, Atlas, Sweden, Trier and our man Pit Schlechter.
Soon their gap rose to five minutes. At first the british felt responsible but after some amateur attempts, the South African Team Qubekah went to the front and started the pursuit of the group. For some reason they didn’t make it to close more than one or one and a half minutes so that the gap after around 90 K’s was still at 4 minutes. Leaving them without desire for more work in the front. Another Team without a rider in the break was the other luxemburgish Continental Team Differdange. After the two important and hard climbs of the day, they started to chase the group and closed around 2:30 within 20 kilometers.
Entering the final laps while catching four riders of the breakaway back we still had a gap of around 2 minutes to the leading four riders. I was so happy, Pit was in that group! Differdange gave everything they had and also the Qubekah came again. When we had 15 K’s to the finishline the german Continental Team NSP also started to pull but didn’t manage to close the gap. Around the same time, one Drapac rider attacked in the breakaway and tried to go for the victory alone. By doing that, the remaining for riders split into pieces of one, two and again one single rider.
It was Floris Goesinnen from Drapac in the front, Pit with Nicki Ostergaard from Glud Marstrand and then Lars Andersson from Sweden behind them. The Dutch from the Drapac Team was strong enough to ride the last 10 K’s alone and Pit was strong enough to beat down Ostergaard in the sprint!
We are all really happy for Pit! He has been working the whole season so far and really earns this second place in this – as I was told – for Luxemburgish people inofficial World Championships :)
The classement didn’t change a lot, but today it will!
Flèche de Sud Stage 1
17. May 2012
Allll right!!! Fleche de Sud opening successful! OK, again we don’t get the victory but with 3 riders in the top ten we showed our ambitions and our top shape.
The short, late evening stage was already a small herald of what will come the next few days. With 139 riders, the peloton was not too big but has a big diversity in riders levels. With teams like us, Glud Marstrand or the Tyrol Team around the brother of Georg Totschnig and on the other hand regional luxembourgish, french and german teams it is always hectic and also dangerous in the peloton.
Nevertheless I was just under the first 30 riders the whole 81 kilometers. During the first two laps, no group developed attacking and jumping though was happening a lot!
During the third lap finally a group developped consisting of 8 riders and with them a Joel Zangerle who is in great shape right now. The situation was a little ambivalent to me though. One one hand I was happy we had one rider in the group, on the other I wanted to be in the group too.
Starting from the beginning of the climb, I attacked from the peloton, went full and caught the group with 500m to the top of the climb. I knew that this lap would be mountain jersey sprint so I just kept on going my rhythm and won the GPM. Unfortunately the group exploded and one rider of the Qubekah Team was caught by the peloton again. For this reason they started to pull on the front of the peloton and we didn’t have a submitted group anymore.
When I saw they were almost on our wheels, I let go and took a deep breath.
Then something strange happened. The Qubekah team pulled with three guys closing the gap to about twenty meters, then one of them just went a little faster than the others and was on the back of the group. In the peloton, nobody seemed to care and the group developped again with the same riders and without me...
Nobody of the whole peloton jumped to the group at all. Maybe this was just the magic combination and I was the disruptive factor for this harmony...
The Atlas team was the only team that pulled again after some easy five kilomters but with only one rider. Peter Kusztor went full at the climb but we didn’t come close to the group at all. Two laps to go, Bob attacked with van Reensburg and me on his wheel. We went full for one lap and caught the breakaway with 6 kilometers to the finishline in the middle of the climb. Unfortunately Jure Golcer (former Giro stage winner) and André Steensen already escaped from the breakaway and we didn’t catch them anymore. I pulled everything I had but somehow it was just not enough. In the descent I took a deep breath again and moved to the front. I was third in the sprint of our group finishing fifth of the stage.
A good start of our „home stage race“ with three riders under the first 10. The two riders in the front only had 11 seconds on our group and the peloton got 57 seconds on the winner. So we have a great position right now. No work to do because we don’t have a jersey and a timetrail coming in three days fitting perfectly to our TT World Champion Bobby-J!
Fleche de Sud
13. May 2012
The Fleche de Sud is our big objectif this year. The team will consist of all four Luxembourg guys, Alexander Pliushin and me. We spent the last 4 days in Luxembourg, watching the tricky passages of the parcour and will therfore all be ready when the race starts on next wednesday! Everyboda is high motivated and eager to do results. We are all in a great shape - which we have to be for this parcour - and our goal is nothing but the victory!
Giro del Friuli Venezia Giulia
07. May 2012
Giro Ciclistico del Friuli Venezi Giulia is a really nice race! OK, maybe my oppinion is strongly influenced by the italian coffe and my performance there but still, I like it.
Since the first two stages were mainly flat, I tried to save as much power as possible but still thinking of not letting a group getting to far away for big pre-deciding time differences.
On stage one, this was not punished at all. We finished second with our Portugese Fabio Silvestre.
On stage two again, was attacking all the time and a group was not released until Kilometer 110. In a bad moment when I went to the back of the peloton, it happened. A group of 28 riders established, luckily Bob was in it, and made it to the Finishline with a gap of 1:20min.
Not being in that group was annoying me pretty much that day but I tried to refocus and found that it probably was my mistake to go in the back of the peloton. I should have stood on the front!
Stage three then was the proof of strength for everybody. Two climbs with each of them about 11k’s long were to do. Again we didn’t manage it to be in a group of 20 riders – not that important on a 11 K uphill finish but still very stuiped! So we had to close the gap of three minutes to the group. Adriano lateron explained us that the italian teams today didn’t ride for a victory but to make the other itaian teams loose... Thats why Leopard was the only team to work in the front. Just Differdange was giving us a bit of a hand with one rider. Fabio, Alex and Pit rode great on the way to the first small climb and closed 1:30 of the gap untill the first real climb. Than it was my time to set the pace and I closed another minute reaching the top of the climb with just 27 seconds to the group. A big effort from me and it felt a little bit senseless when everybody started to attack again after the descent and the following 20 flat kilometers to the final climb because the gap rose again to 2:30 untill the start of the climb. When again nobody felt responsible, I went to the front of the group pulling again the first 4 kilometers full for Bob and than the attacking started while I started to see the red lights in my head...
I needed another 4 of the remaining 8 kilometers to be at least a lttle bit recovered and then I found my rhythm and finished 23.
Stage four was again big fighting – why not say war? – in tropical weather conditions. No, not in a good way, rather in a bad manner in case of rain. I wanted to be in the group of the day so badly that I was fighting so much on the first 80k’s maybe loosing to much power. I managed it though to be in all decisive breaks but never had a gap more than one minute. The rain, the cold and the energy I put into beining in the breaks, steadily sucked the power out of my body and when we reached the final 5 kilometers of the stage, I just didn’t have enough power anymore to stay with the best.
I finished on a descent 14. place, knowing that with a little bit more power, I’d have been able to maybe go for a victory.
The last stage seemed to be rather easy on the paper but turned out as a really thrilling and damn-hard stage. Pallazago with the leader Rosa tryied to keep the peloton under control and we reached the final laps. Six final laps with 150 meters of altitude on 12k’s were to do and my legs were feeling really bad. I still saw my chance in the final kilometer and the uphill sprint because I know that I can do that. You might want to picture it as a real Joaquim Rodriguez finish who by the way would be best described as one of my role models – just in the manner of riding his bike though.
I was gambling on the last 10 kilometers by staying on the back of the remaining 40 riders with one group with 25 seconds still out. I knew, the remaining 40 riders were eager to catch the break even though no team set a controlling pace on the front. With three K’s to go I started to move to the front. At 1500m to go I was at position 10 and in the beginning of the final kilometer a little gap opened in front of me. Bob was screaming at me to go, I waited some 100m again an than went full. I passed the breakaway with 400 to go just befor the last corner. Just two guys were able to follow me. I also let them pass me just before the corner because the remaining 250m flat were as I recognized in the laps before with facewind and I thought coming from the back would be better. But than there was no wind anymore... F*** I was not able to pass them anymore.
Still I’m satisfied with again (same result the year before) a third place on the last stage of the Giro del Friuli but now it’s the time to win stages like that for me, I think.
Nevertheless I travell home with a backpack full of motivation for our big objectif Fleche de Sud.