Hushovd strong, team fighting bad luck in race
The Tour of Flanders didn’t go to plan, but Jonathan Vaughters said this morning prior to the race start that the Garmin-Cervélo team were psyched for Paris-Roubaix.
“The guys are motivated; they’ve kept their morale high which is impressive, considering we haven’t had the greatest run the last couple of weeks,” he told VeloNation’s Ben Atkins at the start. “They’re ready to race, so, you couldn’t ask for anything more than that.”
The team’s dedicated leader is Thor Hushovd, the world road race champion. He was in the right position last week in Flanders but when the hammer went down, he was lacking something and didn’t get to fight for the win. Vaughters said that he had hoped to be there, but things simply didn’t click.
“I think we’ve been racing every race as hard as we possibly could and, you know, some work and some don’t,” he said.
Since the race start, the team has had some bad luck. Roger Hammond had a bad crash and Heinrich Haussler also went down, while Tyler Farrar also had difficulties. It’s turned out that the sunny conditions have been even more troublesome than the wet roads which are often seen on the race; dust can be every bit as slippery as mud.
Vaughters said that he didn’t really know which would suit the team best. “It’s sunny; it’s nice! There are always factors that are going to make this race hard; that’s part of it; that’s the whole idea,” he said. “Do the factors today make certain guys more likely to win than others? Yeah, they do. Does it suit us more or less? Hard to say… Hard to say…”
He was clear about what he would like, though: “A headwind for the last 40-k would be nice, keep it together, for Thor,” he said, with a laugh.