Omega Pharma-Lotto domestique re-evaluates his own expectations but knows his job for the rest of the race
Jelle Vanendert (Omega Pharma-Lotto) was as surprised as anybody to be battling for the stage win on Luz-Ardiden with Samuel Sanchez (Euskaltel-Euskadi) yesterday. The 26-year-old, from the Limburg region of northeast Belgium, is on the team to work as a domestique for Jurgen Van Den Broeck, who has abandoned the race, André Greipel, and Belgian champion Philippe Gilbert.
Vanendert opened his own sprint first, with just over half a kilometre to go, but he didn’t have the necessary power left in his legs and Sanchez came around to take the win. The Belgian managed to hold off the attentions of Fränk Schleck (Leopard Trek) though, to take second place and his biggest ever result.
“Of course I would have loved to have won,” he told Het Nieuwsblad. “But if you’d have told me beforehand that I would finish second in the first mountain stage, I would have asked: ‘Are you crazy?’ I never expected this.”
Vanendert escaped the peloton, in the company of Gilbert and Sanchez, on the descent of the Col du Tourmalet. When the Belgian champion faded back to the bunch though, Vanendert continued, and felt confident about beating the Olympic champion at the finish.
“Secretly I believed in my chances,” he explained. “So I opened up my sprint at 600 metres to the finish. I thought I had better legs in the sprint, which is why I went so early, but unfortunately my legs were completely blown and I no longer had the strength for a full sprint.
“Of course I would have loved to have won," he repeated. "You don’t get many opportunities to take a victory in the Tour, and Samuel Sanchez is not the best of the best. But you have to remember all the work I’ve been doing in the Tour in the past ten days.”
With Omega Pharma-Lotto coming to the Tour with three captains, there has been a lot for Vanendert to do, with an overall contender, a sprinter, and a puncheur to work for. Despite the loss of one of those captains, and his own outstanding result, Vanendert does not expect things to change very much.
“It was agreed that I would come here to the Tour as a domestique,” he said. “This is my first Tour, and all the other Grand Tours I’ve done have never really been a success. Even now, with Jurgen Van Den Broeck gone, there is little change; I’ll just try and do my best for Philippe. Maybe we’ll be able to get the green jersey back in the mountains and then hold it to Paris; this remains an important objective for the team.”
While he managed to stay with the favourites on the first mountain stage, he dismisses any suggestion that he might look to climb the overall classification.
“I lost a lot of time in the team time trial and on some of the other stages I struggled to get a good result,” he explained. “I was a servant, not a team leader; I’m not going to suddenly try and follow the favourites every day. I’ve already lost too much time in nearly every stage over the last ten days; it makes no sense to aim at the classification. If I have bad legs, I’ll just get into the gruppetto.”
While his role in this race won’t change, Vanendert will certainly re-evaluate his own expectations after taking such a good result.
“Where this will end I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve already seriously moved my limits here. I’ll just do my best for our leaders: further assist Greipel in the sprints and Gilbert in the green jersey battle.”