Garmin Slipstream’s Johan Van Summeren had a bad crash in Paris-Roubaix and saw his aims of a high finish slip away in the split-second it took him to hit the ground. He is still feeling the after-effects of that and said that he planned to decide today whether or not he will be up for the Amstel Gold Race this coming weekend.
“Today I will have a long workout and then I will decide whether I’ll start on Sunday,” he said, according to Sporza. “On Tuesday I spent an hour on the bike and that was already not good.”
However he’s improved on how he felt earlier in the week. “I have been feeling better,” he confirmed. “I have some headaches and am sometimes dizzy. [As regards] my shoulder, I lost some skin but there’s nothing broken.”
Van Summeren finished a fine fifth in last year’s Paris-Roubaix and had hoped to go even higher this time round. However, like many of the Garmin Transitions team, he was hit by bad luck last Sunday and crashed. He was 27th in the 2009 Amstel Gold race but if he has recovered sufficiently to ride, will aim to perform better than that this Sunday. It would be one way of making up for the disappointment he faced in Northern France.
Whether or not he is able to compete in the Dutch race, he will hope for a strong performance from the Garmin team. He feels that Fabian Cancellara is one that must be watched; the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix winner is not known as a climber but, as Vansummeren points out, he has already been able to defy expectations on uphill terrain.
“I do not see why he cannot win with his condition. He has already won the Tour of Switzerland,” he warns.