Matti Breschel (Rabobank) has finally started his first race for his new team: he is currently at the Volta ao Algarve and, while he has not featured in the race he is happy to be there. The race is his first since October’s Giro di Lombardia, after sitting out the winter with a knee injury.
It’s a strange sensation that the World Championship silver medallist from Melbourne last year welcomes most as a sign of the peloton, as he told sporten.dk.
“It was nice to get going again,” he said. “It is just like before, I've missed that iron taste you get in your mouth at the start of the race because you feel like you are coughing up blood.”
Breschel’s knee injury had him worried that he may never race again, but now he is fully recovered and pleased to be back in the peloton.
“You have pain, you cannot ride,” he said of his injury over the winter. “It is some time since I've had pain and I took care to get ready to be able to go the distance in a race, and this race is a good one to start.”
Now he’s back on his bike, the former Danish champion can start looking at his targets for the season with his new Rabobank team. Ordinarily, these would be the cobbled Classics, where he will be the undisputed leader of the team; thanks to having to miss much of his winter training though, he will have to a tough ride getting himself into form through races.
Right now though, the Dane has not made definite plans as to which races he will be riding between now and the Classics.
“We’re taking things as they come,” he explained, “I’ll just carry on here [in the Algarve] first. You can make hundreds of thousands of plans, but can still end up having to make some of them up.”