While the race win would have been a more prestigious result, the Cervélo Test Team of Thor Hushovd and Roger Hammond can be satisfied with the second and fourth places achieved in yesterday’s Paris-Roubaix Classic.
Thor Hushovd outpsrinted Juan Antonio Flecha to better his third place of 2009, while Roger Hammond finished one place outside his own career-best finish of third, taken back in 2004.
For Hushovd, the performance was confirmation that he is back on track after illness and injury hampered his early season.
"I feel like I'm getting back to my old self," he stated. "Roger and Jeremy Hunt, plus the whole team did a fantastic job today keeping pace at the front. I was really, really tired at the end but I managed to edge out Flecha.”
Hammond said that the team’s plan was to have someone in the early break. When Hunt achieved that, it took the pressure off a little.
“We were nice and relaxed except in the back of my mind this means we're with the big guys and we have to go when they go. Fortunately, with the help of all the other guys we were protected and that meant Thor and I were able to follow when they really went.”
Defending champion Tom Boonen (Quick Step) started putting the hammer down far earlier than expected. Hammond answered these surges with some of his own, but was unable to get clear due to close marking.
“I was hoping to open up the race early and make Boonen and Cancellera commit,” he explained. “But Cancellera was isolated, he was on his own basically in the front so I started attacking early but they also started following me really early. Cancellera was unbelievable, he was on a different planet, and we realized we had to ride for second directly. So we started racing for second once he was on his own.
“I mean to get second and fourth is not bad really, if you take Cancellera out of the equation we got first and third."
The team was missing two big riders in Heinrich Haussler and Andreas Klier. Directeur sportif Jean Paul Van Poppel knows that their participation could have changed everything, and so he recognises that the Cervélo riders performed very strongly yesterday.
“Even without Andreas (Ger-Klier) and Heinrich (Ger-Haussler) here, we still had a great team today. Everything went according to plan. What can you do about Cancellera? He had a super day again; we saw him like this in the world championships time trial and other times and we expected him, but we still are focused on the long race.
“We knew that was coming [into form]. The past week was a bit unlucky but today he was there. I think he is almost 100% and second is a good place to get, I think he is happy with it. And you can see Roger got 4th, Jeremy got 18th. Overall, that makes us the most dominant team in the race and that makes us really proud.”