Cancellara wins tiny prologue in Luxembourg. Small applause, please.

//Cancellara wins tiny prologue in Luxembourg. Small applause, please.

Cancellara wins tiny prologue in Luxembourg. Small applause, please.

Hey, it’s a small country. The 2.7 kilometer prologue is all they have room for in Luxembourg. Any farther and riders hit the borders and police checkpoints and they have to stop, hand over a passport and then try to get up to full speed again.

Fabian Cancellara is always at full speed and such was the case today. While a win in the prologue of the Tour of Luxembourg probably won’t make a special episode of his Trek Driven By Glory video series, still a win is a win.

“I wanted to get a personal win and a win for the team, but I especially wanted to ride the perfect race after our loss a few weeks ago. This win is for Wouter.”

The Swiss time trial and world champion won by five seconds over Damien Gaudin (Team Europecar and eight over Jimmy Engoulvent (Saur – Sojasun). At the other end of the race, Christian Poos (Team Differdange – Magic-Sportfood.de) finished last, 52 seconds later, an eternity by anyone’s watch. Was he riding some kind of unicycle?

The short prologue was filled with cobblestones, a cobbled climb, road furniture and plenty of turns. It did not seem to bother Cancellara is is rarely bothered by any road with a clock attached.

Still, you don’t become a dominant force unless you’re a perfectionist. “The problem with time trials is that when it’s over, you always think about what went wrong and where you lost some time,” said Cancellara. “Even when I win, like today, I always find something that I could have done better. The short effort required during a prologue like this one does not correspond with what we do during a normal race. That’s why it’s so interesting.”

Interesting indeed. That’s all we have time for today in Luxembourg. It is, after all, a short prologue.

By |2019-02-03T16:19:35-08:00June 1st, 2011|Uncategorized|0 Comments

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