Double Tour de France runner-up Andy Schleck finished behind rival Cadel Evans yesterday, crossing the line 33 seconds behind the victorious BMC Racing Team rider after the uphill finish to Macerata. His Tirreno-Adriatico has been a quiet one, with yesterday’s 23rd place being the best stage placing yet for the Luxembourg climber.
He starts today’s final time trial 43rd overall, 13 minutes and 57 seconds behind the Australian. However Leopard Trek directeur sportif Luca Guercilena said that there was no reason to be worried. In fact, he sees positives to the performance.
“We did hard racing these last few days,” he stated. “Andy’s condition is not really, really high yet. He is still around 75 percent, so if the pace goes really fast on a climb like this, it’s normal that he can’t compete when he is not 100 percent.
“Although it is too difficult for Andy at this moment, today shows us that his fitness is going up. We think with a small recovery time after this, he will be really close to where he wants to be for his first goals of the season.”
Schleck is likely to target a strong ride in the Ardennes Classics as that first goal. He won Liège-Bastogne-Liège two years ago and was sixth in 2010.
He’s clearly not going to contend during today’s 9.3 kilometre time trial, but the team has a potential winner in Fabian Cancellara. The world time trial champion has a chance to take his first win of the season on a course that should suit him perfectly.
He didn’t push too hard yesterday and should be relatively fresh for the time trial. “We had some of the others take it a bit easy,” said Guercilena yesterday. “We want to go deep in the time trial tomorrow with Fabian and Stuart [O’Grady]. This is the goal of Tirreno now…we believe we can do a big result.”