American sprinter believes form is good, will ‘find out today’
Having built up well for this year’s Giro d’Italia, American rider Tyler Farrar is psyched to aim for the third stage win of his career. He sees stage one as a perfect opportunity for a big gallop. “This is one of the most straightforward sprint days of the Giro…big flat stage, fairly straightforward finish, pretty much a guaranteed sprint,” he said, shortly before the start in Alba.
“I see four stages that I think that I’m pretty sure will arrive in a sprint. Then there’s two or three others that maybe they will, maybe they won’t, probably not…but we’ll of course try.”
Farrar had originally hoped to spend time in the pink jersey, but Garmin-Cervélo’s fifth place in yesterday’s team time trial has made that more complicated. They conceded 24 seconds to HTC Highroad and so he has a big deficit to make up to Marco Pinotti and Mark Cavendish. The first of those is not a sprinter, but Cavendish is one of the very quickest riders in cycling and is himself gunning for the Maglia Rosa.
Farrar was clearly frustrated after yesterday’s stage, looking disappointed at the finish. “Obviously, it could’ve been better for us,” he said. “We didn’t really have our strongest team time trial team here, we had a few of our really good riders but not all of them. You know, we didn’t have the greatest ride but that’s life – it’s done, it’s finished, you know. We still not too far off for Christophe [Le Mevel] in the GC, it’s good and we have a sprint today, so hopefully we can do things right.”
“I think my form should be good. I rode the Tour of Turkey, and everything went well there, I stayed healthy, stayed upright and felt stronger as the race went on. I guess we’ll find out today.”
