Regarded for several years as a rider who could potentially go on to contend in a Grand Tour, Jakob Fuglsang clocked up the best three week performance of his career when he finished seventh in the Tour de France yesterday.
The Astana team leader had shown talent earlier in his career when he won the world under 23 XC mountainbike championship and then took three consecutive editions of the Tour of Denmark.
He was also eleventh in the 2011 Vuelta a España, but was not permitted to start the Grand Tours last year by then-team manager Johan Bruyneel as he planned to move from RadioShack Trek to Astana.
Seventh in the Tour confirms his potential and suggests that he can continue to build in the seasons ahead.
“We set a goal at the beginning of the season that brought me here to Paris. Together with the managers and directors we prepared training camps, a race schedule and a specific work to bring me into this race,” said Fuglsang.
“The Tour de France is like no other bike race in the world, and we knew that a top ten was already an extremely difficult goal to accomplish. Thanks to my teammates, our soigneurs and mechanics, the directors and staff, and to our technical sponsors at Specialized Racing, Campagnolo and Corima, we were able to finish in seventh overall at the 100th edition. We accomplished our goal.”
The Danish rider is now likely to ride the Vuelta a España, although his role there is expected to be in support of Vincenzo Nibali rather than as the outright team leader. Nibali has already won the Giro d’Italia this year and wants to try to win in Spain.
Astana’s genera manager Alexander Vinokourov is pleased at the Tour result, not least because it was achieved despite a lack of manpower at the end.
“We lost four riders along the road to Paris, and we were the smallest team left at the end of the race with just five men on their bikes,” he explained.
“But we also helped Jakob get to seventh and stay there, and in the final week in the Alps, when the other teams had two or even three riders climbing with their leaders, Jakob was making smart choices and racing with great intelligence and strength.”
Fuglsang finished twelve minutes seventeen seconds behind race winner Chris Froome (Sky). He was slightly over five minutes off a place on the podium, and 35 seconds off the sixth place of Bauke Mollema (Belkin Pro Cycling).