Saxo Bank’s Jakob Fuglsang won his third straight Tour of Denmark yesterday and is enjoying a period of good form after riding the Tour de France in support of Andy Schleck. This makes the Danish time trial champion is all the more frustrated that he has such little racing scheduled for the rest of the season.
“I can of course fully understand that the team has to follow the plans that have been decided,” he told Politiken, “yet from now until the season ends at the Giro di Lombardia on October 16th, I have just seven days of racing. The worst thing is that they all have very large spaces between them.”
This season has been very different to last for the 25-year-old; in 2009 the Vuelta a España was his one and only Grand Tour and he was able to use the form built up in the three-week race through to the end of the season. This year he rode the Tour de France instead, but now finds that there are not so many races in his schedule as he would like.
“I must wait for until September 10th and 12th in Canada for my first competition,” he said, “where I’m riding two new ProTour races. Then I go for about a month before I have five starts in Italy.”
The end of season races in Italy suit Fuglsang’s abilities and he hopes that his current form will last long enough for him to be competitive.
“I hope that I can, for example, get a good result in the Giro dell’Emilia on October 9th,” he said. “I was second last year and I believe I can win it; but it all depends on whether I can keep in shape.
“It requires a good deal of self-discipline,” he added, “and although I don’t usually have any problems in this direction, it’s true that races provide the best training.”