[ad_1]
"With Wilco, we had a very good chance of winning the team time trial," said Dumoulin. "Now I do not expect us to win, or let me say it that way: it would surprise me if we win, I think we're going to lose some time, but not a lot. "
Kelderman was less than a week before the start of the Grand Start for the Tour as he crashed last Sunday at the Dutch Championship on the road and was again injured in the shoulder. .
Amersfoorter, 27, was registered as Dumoulin's main servant in the mountains and as a big driver in Monday's team time trial. Kelderman was in September with Dumoulin, Sören Kragh Andersen, Lennard Kämna, Michael Matthews and Sam Oomen in the Sunweb team who became team world champion in Norway Bergen
Dumoulin, Andersen and Matthews are now part of the team. The Tour team and the German team took experienced riders with Chad Haga, Nikias Arndt and Edward Theuns. That's why team leader Luke Roberts thinks that Sunweb can also succeed without Kelderman in the 35.5-kilometer time trial with start and finish in Cholet.
"Of course, Wilco could have added some extras, but we still have team time trials," said the Australian. "I think we can participate in the win."
Best times
Dumoulin and Roberts agree that the team time trial, which returns on the Tour de France after two years of absence, "I think the best classification team will have three minutes on the worst classification team ", predicts Dumoulin, individually also the world champion against the clock
" This will be an important day for the classification riders, "says Roberts." It's only 35 kilometers, but on this track you can be crushed, there are some very fast parts, especially if you have seven or eight riders, top speeds of 80 km per hour are possible. "
Jig
Team Sunweb's advice, like many other team s having classification ambitions, have invested heavily in the team time trial in recent months
The formation has developed a fixed jig for this part, so it does not matter that the eight riders of the Tour have never made a team time trial in this composition.
"All the riders of our Tour team have already started on behalf of Sunweb as part of a team time trial, so they know the basic plan," says Roberts. We also train at training camps in winter, so just before the team time trial, we can talk about very specific details instead of basics, and hope to get that extra supplement from the team. team. "
In 2015, the last time there was a team time-trial on the Tour, BMC won, the American team was a second faster than Team Sky after 28 kilometers On Monday, the first team (Mitchelton-Scott) will start at 15:10 in Cholet and the last (BORA Hansgrohe coach Peter Sagan) at 16:55 The Sunweb team starts at 4:15 pm 35.5 kilometers.
Source link
