Triple Tour stage winner will compete this week in Route du Sud
Having missed the Tour de France last year due to Lyme disease, a relieved Pierrick Fédrigo has said that he expects that his recent crash and withdrawal from the Critérium du Dauphiné should not prevent him from racing in La Grand Boucle this year.
“I think so,” he said, when asked if he believes he’ll be in the race. “With Sandy [Casar – ed.], we are the two pillars of the team. But it is Marc [Madiot, team manager] who will decide. I know that he is counting on me to win a stage and guide the young riders on the team.”
As his three previous stage wins show, the FDJ BigMat rider is one of the top bets for a French stage win when he’s in top condition. He triumphed in 2006, 2009 and 2010, the latter triumph coming out of the breakaway group in which Lance Armstrong had staked his hopes on taking a stage victory.
This year, Fedrigo showed his form which a win on the mountain stage of the Critérium International and second place overall. He was also sixth overall in the Four Days of Dunkirk.
The Dauphiné was to form a big part of his push to build form for the Tour, but he hit the deck on stage one and pulled out the following day. The accident happened when Samuel Sanchez’s chain came off, and he stopped to fix it. Fedrigo said that the Spaniard was standing in the middle of the road and he collided with him, hitting his knee hard on the ground.
He limped into the finish, losing a lot of time, then got dropped early on during the following stage and pulled out.
Physiotherapy and ultrasound sessions helped him recover and he has been training to get ready for his next races. Fedrigo plans to make up for his withdrawal from the Dauphiné by riding the Route du Sud, which begins in two days time, with that race helping him to hone his form prior to the French championships and the Tour.
“I leave Wednesday for the start of the race the next day,” he told Sudouest.fr. “I’m still going with ambition. I was thinking of doing a good Dauphiné, and in the end I had no luck. I had the form. But it’s not a case that because I stopped two or three days early, I will lose everything.”
He’s itching to get back to the Tour. “Before last year, I had not missed a single edition for eight years,” he said. “It was hard to watch it on TV and not join the party.”