Our chance – gone with the wind!

Our chance – gone with the wind!

Hi guys,
around 48 hours after the World Cup, here are some infos about the race from my point of view.

The German team was very motivated and well prepared for the race. All riders, coaches and the sporting management had invested a great effort to be well prepared. Peter Sagan proved again, that you don’t need 6 or even 9 riders to become champion. Congrats to Peter for his strong performance. He’s got such a wide range of abilities, which no other cyclist in the world has got. Not only his diverse physical abilities and his self-confidence are unique, he also can read a race pretty good.

the race:

Through the preparatory work of Nils Politt, Jasha Sütterlin and Tony Martin, John Degenkolb and I could jump into into the first echelon. After another curve and an even narrower road, I couldn’t get into the next created echelon and so i quickly found myself in the second group. A little bit later John fell back with a defect and had to join the second group where Marcel and I were trying to get closer to the leading group. Without this defect Dege could have a had a chance to fight about the world title.

We tried everything to close the gap but we had no chance. Especially the teams from Belgium and Italy with 8 riders gave full speed and kept us at a distance. We had a realistic chance of the podium, but simply do not act consistently enough at the crucial moments. Even when we rode the rounds on Pearl Island we gave everything in the first three rounds to get closer but little by little our resources were gone. For certain our time trial riders could have helped us here, but unfortunately the wind wasn’t on our side this day. In my opinion,  all the speculation about our team were useless. Marcel and John have proven that they are team player. They have sacrificed themselves for me. I really appreciate it. And I respect all of my team mates for the work they have done.

I will learn from these experiences and I already look forward to the new season. Cycling is my passion and my job at the same time. If there are possible improvements then I will focus on them and continue the hard work to become even better. I’m gonna fight for every millimeter.

I have been the captain of the German team and of course I’m taking responsibility for the race. It’s always a great honor to represented Germany, so knew I wanted to finish this race, even there was nothing to gain.

Thank you for your permanent support. Please keep your fingers crossed for the next season.

Yours André

 

 

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