André Greipel (Lotto-Belisol) started the season with his annual performance check, run by his coach Sebastian Weber. The German is tackling the first race of the season in January, with the Tour Down Under. With his partially newly acquired sprint train, he hopes to take out more victories than in 2011 and especially wins in the bigger races.
The German recently returned from his post-season vacation. "The vacation was better than the performance test," he jokes on muax.de. "Every beginning is hard, but at some point you have to start the season." He adds that the break was good for him, after a busy 2011.
Coach Weber explains that the tests are always done around the same time of the year, in early November. "That way we can determine where to put the focus on, which intensity to use and it also allows a comparison to previous years." The values for his sprinting capabilities look ok, whereas the endurance part is slightly lower. "After the rest period it wouldn't be too good if the values would be high," Weber says.
Greipel is not too worried about it, either. "If the values would be outstanding then something would have gone wrong, after the break. You don't expect that much, it is simply meant as a fix point to plan the training for the next two months."
In 2011, he obtained 8 victories, less than half of his 21 wins in 2010. But quality is a factor, too. "I would have liked to win more races, but I wanted to win a Tour de France stage and I managed that." He won stage 10 from Aurillac to Carmaux, ahead of Mark Cavendish. He hopes he can improve in 2012. "It wouldn't be bad to win more races next year and to follow up on the successes to also win some big races."
To make it happen, Greg Henderson and Lars Bak were hired from the HTC Highroad team. "I think this is an important step in terms of getting a better sprint train," Greipel says. "If I just take Greg Henderson, Marcel Sieberg, and Jürgen Roelandts - if we four work together well then it will be very hard to pass us." Greipel bases his assumption on past experience. "With Henderson and Sieberg, I won four stages at the 2009 Vuelta."
There are several teams with a strong sprint setup, like Sky (Mark Cavendish), Lampre (Alessandro Petacchi), the Skil-Shimano successor 1t4i (Marcel Kittel) or Green Edge (Matt Goss). "Many sprinters came from HTC and passed the know-how to other teams. There are many squads which try to use that knowledge."
His first race is the Tour Down Under and with different sponsoring and a team minus Philippe Gilbert, Greipel wants to hit the ground running. "It is always good to start the season with a win. I can always take positive things from a tour and I don't want to change[my program]."