Involved in a collision with Spanish champion Jose Joaquin Rojas in the finale of Gent-Wevelgem and prevented from taking what was a possible top ten placing in the prestigious Classic, Matteo Tosatto continues to get over his injuries. However, while the Saxo Bank rider is still sore, he hopes to be sufficiently recovered to be in the hunt in Sunday’s Ronde Van Vlaanderen.
“It was incomprehensibly bad luck to finish Gent-Wevelgem the way I did Sunday,” he said, thinking back to the crash. “We were accelerating at high pace and I never got to even put my hand down first as the front wheel simply vanished, causing me to hit the asphalt with immense power.”
Rojas appeared to many to be the culprit of the collision. He was first hemmed in against the barriers on the left hand side, almost going down through no fault of his own, but then he veered across towards the centre of the road, hooked left around a slowing Farnese Vini Selle Italia rider, then moved right abruptly to go onto the rear wheel of FDJ BigMat rider Steve Chainel.
In doing so he cut off Tosatto, who had been in that same space, and caused the two of them to hit the ground.
The Italian doesn’t pinpoint Rojas in speaking about the crash, preferring to look forward rather than mull over what happened. “The blow still tortures me but I hope to be fit enough for Sunday's Tour of Flanders,” he said yesterday.
“It's a hugely important race that demands no less than peak shape. Today, we did the new parts of the course and I can tell it's going to be an exciting event where everything can and probably will happen as it gets much harder than last year's edition. So I really hope I can recover in time and hopefully have a little more luck than last Sunday.”
His team will soon find out if it will retain its UCI WorldTour licence, having lost most of its points when Alberto Contador’s 2011 results were struck off. Tosatto and the other riders know that the results they clock up are important, and this will give them additional impetus to perform.