Riding the Tour of Qatar as one of a very small number of riders who also competed in the preceding Dubai Tour, Fabian Cancellara attributed his fourth place in today’s time trial as being at least partially due to accumulated fatigue.
The Dubai race finished on Saturday, after which Cancellara took a flight to Qatar and then lined out in stage one of the race the following day.
As a result of that he is considerably more fatigued that the other riders who started fresh in Qatar, and believes that this could have made the difference today.
“I am satisfied with the first kilometres, but the last three kilometres were pretty hard,” he said after taking fourth, six seconds behind the day’s winner Michael Hepburn (Orica GreenEdge).
“I am feeling the race days; this is the seventh straight day, and I think my normal power was missing.”
Cancellara was actually quickest at the intermediate time check, but slipped backwards inside the final kilometres and finished just off the podium.
For a rider who has won the world time trial championship four times and also taken numerous victories in the race against the clock, losing today’s test might seem like a big setback.
However given his fatigue from the Dubai Tour, the necessity to utilise standard bikes rather than his normal dialled in TT machine plus his redefined focus on Classic races, he kept the bigger picture in mind when weighing up where he was at.
“Ten kilometres is a short intensity,” he reasoned. “It is not like 160 or 200 kilometres. I know where I am at; I believe in the team, I believe in myself. We had bad luck yesterday [when he was delayed due to a crash – ed.] and sometimes you begin to see negative things from that.
“But that is sport. As long as we stay healthy, and not crash, that is the most important. At this race you must be at the very front, you have to be 100 percent focused and prepared if you want to win. As a team we did not come here with those specific goals. We know what we are doing, we know where we have come from, and what we want to achieve. We are here to begin to grow towards our specific goals later.”
He will aim to win the Ronde van Vlaanderen and Paris-Roubaix again, having done the double in 2010 and again last year.