The Cervélo TestTeam was quite happy with its Tour of Qatar. After six stages, the team around sports director Jens Zemke won the teams classification and team member Heinrich Haussler took the points jersey.
The only regret was the controversial ruling in the opening team time trial, when Haussler and Gabriel Rasch almost collided due to the wind. But the jury ruled this as an illegal push and penalized the whole team. “Without the one minute penalty from the first stage we would have had a good change to win our first stage race of the season,” Zemke said. “But we move on. The riders have confirmed that this was good preparation for them and that they are ready for the season.”
In the final stage, Cervélo tried to finally win one, but the best placed rider was Haussler in ninth spot. “Again today there was very little wind so we tried to prepare the sprint for Theo [Bos] and Heinrich had a free role in the final,” Zemke said. “But it was pretty stressful in that final since a lot of teams wanted to win this last stage and we do have the best sprinters in the peloton here.”
Bos is still learning his transition from trackie to road sprinter. “I had the opportunity to sprint for a victory. I learned a lot from these races and from my teammates, we can only grow as a team after this race,” Bos said. “Today it was quite difficult to control the race, we tried to come together as team in the front.” Bos admitted of making a mistake by getting into position too late in the game. “I was just able to move up in the last 800 meters, than I had to brake and I was not able to sprint for the victory anymore.” Bos ended the day in 39th place.