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The 216 km “chess game/mission impossible” breakaway.
The man from Montreal was, no doubt, our hero today - going full throttle for more than 5 hours, trying to create a miracle.
Here is his story in his own words, if you like, an “inside the head” of the guy who almost made the distance.
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Israel Start-Up Nation, 12 mars
We decided before the week even started that we were going to try to go in the break today. When we found there were only five guys in the break, well, it’s a long way to go, 217 kilometers with five guys. There were some quite big engines in there, Niki Terpstra, Tobias Ludvigsson, Mark Padun, and so I was like, ok, we’ll see in about 180 kms where the gap is at and maybe…
“I mean, a day like this is like playing chess all day with the bunch. And then the last 40-50 kilometers you go full gas, but the rest of the day you just go at tempo and see. Really the bunch controls whether you have a chance or not.
“We got eight minutes but it was still early on, and when we had the eight minutes, I think someone tried to hit it in the crosswinds behind us and it came back down to like four minutes real quick .And we got it back up to five and a half, I believe, after the climb.
“It just would have been sweet… if there had been no wind from there to the finish we would have had a real chance. Only two km short!
“But it’s ok. We gave it a chance and that’s all we can do and then one day we’ll succeed.
“You have to try many times and one day it’ll work out. I think we saw that last year when Alex Dowsett won a stage in the Giro from a breakaway like this.
“We didn’t talk much in the break group because we were on the pedals pretty much all day. There was like 3000 meters of climbing and it was quite windy. We were pushing pretty much all day. Sometimes on days like this you have a couple hours where you think it’s pretty easy, but today was like on the pedals all day. It’s exhausting.
“When you have a day like today, well, it’s the stuff you dream of. It doesn’t always happen but when it happens it’s really magical. You have to try. If you don’t try, you’re never going to make it. And we will keep trying.
“Will I try again? Yeah, for sure. I mean if the team asks me to try, I’ll try. If they ask me to stay with the sprinters then I’ll do that.”
And it all needed in a good note when Hugo Hofstetter was able to get into the finish, just behind the leaders, finishing top 10.
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