Along with Columbia HTC’s Tony Martin, Linus Gerdemann (Milram) will start the Tour de France as one of the few current German riders with recent experience of wearing a special jersey in the event. Martin spent a lot of last year’s Tour in the white jersey of best young rider; three years ago, Gerdemann won the seventh stage of the Tour to Le Grand-Bornand, seizing the yellow jersey of race leadership.
At the time he was hailed as a possible future Grand Tour winner but his progress since then has been intermittent and somewhat faltering. He’s taken some big results, of course, including the Deutschland Tour in 2008, the Bayern Rundfahrt in 2009 and stages in the Vuelta a Mallorca and Tirreno-Adriatico this year. However he needs another big Grand Tour performance to put him back in the frame as being seen as someone who can challenge for the overall title in such events.
Gerdemann rode the Giro d’Italia this year and finished a solid sixteenth overall. He feels the could have done better, but became sick with a cold and his performances suffered.
“I wanted to ride the Giro,” he told Radsport-News.”It went very well for me, but it’s just a pity I became ill in the last week. Up until then, when I became really sick, a top ten ranking in the standings would have been possible.”
The 27 year old has hardly raced since the Giro d’Italia, lining out only in the German road race championships. He was a distant 82nd but would have helped his Milram team-mate Christian Knees take the victory.
“I had hoped the German Championships would form a real test,” he said. “But the circuit was not too selective and the race was dominated by tactics, so I did not really get clues about my form. Nevertheless, I think that it is quite good.
“The Giro was quite exhausting, but in training I’ve been feeling very, very well and I am going into the Tour with a certain expectation, even if I don’t know exactly where I stand as I have not raced for a long time.”
Gerdemann is trying out a different programme to last year, when he won the Bayern Rundfarht and then rode the Tour de Suisse. He was tired in the latter event, placing just 41st, and was a rather quiet 23rd overall in the Tour. He decided to do things differently in 2010, riding the Giro and then resting and training since then.
“It's no secret that I was not satisfied with my performance last year in the Tour de France. I wanted to try something different as a result,” he explained. “You probably won’t be able to say until after the Tour whether or not that bears fruit.”
When asked, he wouldn’t be drawn on whether or not he was targeting stage wins or a high overall finish.
“I really go without any specific objective in the Tour,” he explained. “I think I'm in a good form, and the first mountain stages are likely to provide information about what makes sense and what does not. But I do not want to exclude the two possibilities from the outset. I will look at what is possible in the race.
“I have already won a high mountain stage in the Tour, and I feel comfortable there. I have now spent another two weeks in the mountains and think that I am currently in good shape for the climbs.”
The Tour de France begins in Rotterdam this Saturday. Gerdemann’s aim will be to ride as well as possible in the prologue, and then stay out of trouble on the following tricky stages. He’ll then try to do something in the mountains, finding out then if his Giro-Tour experiment has gone to plan.