Speaking after being in a stage-long break on yesterday’s penultimate day of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge, Tour de France runner-up Andy Schleck has said that he believes that his time at the race has been a very worthwhile one, and should hopefully set him up for a very strong end of season.
While Tour de France rivals Cadel Evans (BMC Racing Team), Alberto Contador (Saxo Bank SunGard) and others have either ended their seasons (Contador) or will shortly do so (Evans), Schleck plans to keep racing for several more weeks. The Giro di Lombaria is presumably one of those targets, but before then he has several other races he will target.
“As everyone knows, I really like to race overseas. I’ve done the Amgen Tour of California and the Tour de Georgia and Philadelphia,” he said after the stage. “The USA Pro Cycling Challenge has been really, really special. I didn’t know how I would perform in altitude and I’ve experienced something really different here.”
He arrived early and has spent some time there, adjusting to living and training high above sea level. While many of his other rivals have previously used such training to prepare for races like the Tour de France, he said beforehand that it was something of an experiment for him and a journey into the unknown. If he’s happy with the effect on his form when he returns to Europe, expect his preparation to change for the Tour.
“Many people misunderstood – I came here to train in altitude, not specifically to train for this race,” he said. “I came here because I wanted to know how I was going to react and recover in altitude. Honestly I expected to be better in this race. I was suffering every day, but today I started feeling better again. My main goal in coming here was to see how I’d react when I came back to Europe and back to sea level. We’ll see where I stand in two weeks.”
At this point in time, though, he’s sure of the effects; he said that it has impacted on how he has been able to perform. “It is a little bit of a slow-motion race. A climb like today, if we’d done it at sea level, I think we would have done it four or five minutes faster – so it really is like slow motion,” he admitted. “This has definitely been a hard race. I expected the climbs to be harder here, but altitude has been the biggest force. I don’t think the climbs are harder than places like the Alps, but it is the altitude that makes us suffer.”
Attacking racing on the road to Breckenridge:
Until yesterday, Schleck had been a little quieter in the race than the organisers had expected. He ended Friday’s stage back in 39th place overall, almost seven minutes down. He made up for it yesterday, though, going clear with Janier Acevedo (Gobernacion de Antioquia), Ivan Basso (Liquigas-Cannondale), Thomas Peterson (Garmin-Cervelo) and Laurens Ten Dam (RaboBank) after the summit of Rabbit Ears Pass, driving the four man group along [Acevedo was forced to drop back due to a mechanical] and then attacking near the end of the stage.
Schleck’s bid for stage victory happened on the final climb, the ascent of Swan Mountain. This was 14.4 kilometres from the finish and while he dug in to try to stay clear, he was ultimately reeled in by the chasing trio with approximately five kilometres remaining, and then by the bunch with 700 metres to go. The attempt to take the stage was unsuccessful, but he animated the race and earned the most aggressive rider award.
“When we went on Rabbit Ears Pass, we didn’t expect it to be that hard because in training it had been quite easy,” he said. “But during the race I was at my limit trying to stay in the front group. When the breakaway went, it was another breakaway that went by chance. I could see straightaway that there were strong guys there.
“Today I was really close to winning the stage. I came over the last climb with 15 seconds – if I maybe would’ve had 20 it could have changed. They caught me with four kilometers to go and I believed I could win. I’ll go home and think I had a good stage for myself today and it was a good test. I have goals for myself this year and I think this race brought me back up to a good level.”
As regards the chances of him coming back to the race in the future, he appears to be open to the idea. He’s impressed by what he has seen thus far and recognises that the race could further expand in the years ahead.
“The USA Pro Cycling Challenge is really good for us and it is a beautiful course,” he said. “I believe it is a race that is going to be a lot bigger in the future. We shouldn’t forget that this is just the first year of the race – if you look back to the first year of the Amgen Tour of California they didn’t have as many people as this first year of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge.
“In the climbs, the crowds were comparable to the Tour de France – I was really surprised, I didn’t expect that many supporters.”