Cervélo TestTeam riders Heinrich Haussler and Dominque Rollin both hit the deck in the closing kilometers of stage one of Tour of California. The incident happened at the front end of the peloton while everyone was fighting for position behind Mark Cavendish and his HTC-Columbia train. The team was working to set Theo Bos up for the sprint when the incident occurred.
"It was a hard stage and we were nervous. It was a beautiful day on a great course with thousands of people out supporting the event - it was incredible to see that kind of enthusiasm in North America for cycling," commented TestTeam's João Correia after the race. "It was a nice stage, though we had a little bit of bad luck in the end. It was basically a criterium and most of us, especially the Europeans are not used to riding a criterium at the end. It wasn't fast enough, and couple of guys, from some of the North American teams were nervous, and then the crash happened and it kind of screwed everything up."
Correia himself is new to the European scene following a move from Bissell in the off-season.
"The strategy in the final was to keep Theo Bos out of trouble," he explained. "We had five guys with Theo to do the lead out with Brett Lancaster being the last guy. But they all got caught up in the crash and Dominique and Heinrich both went down."
The Tour of California is Haussler's first race back since being forced to miss the Spring Classics due to a knee injury. The talented German looked ready to build on his second place finishes in Milan-Sanremo and the Tour of Flanders, until a crashes in stage four of both the Volta ao Algarve and Paris-Nice derailed his campaign.
"Tomorrow is the same stage as last year with an extra climb in the middle that will make it a little more difficult," sports directer Jean Paul Van Poppel added. "The end will be a bunch sprint and like today, an excellent opportunity that we hope we can take advantage of. But tonight we have to see how Dominique and Heinrich are and hopefully we start tomorrow with a healthy team."