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NASTY ROUNDABOUTS AND NICE WINS IN NORTHERN FRANCE
Roger Hammond: 600 metres from the finish there was a roundabout that broke things up a bit and as soon as we went round it, I started leading Mark out from the front of the bunch. I kept going even though it was uphill and not too pleasant, but I was going really well, hammering it...
Mark Cavendish In fact he was going so well he nearly burned me off his wheel, and I was looking left and right to see if there was anybody coming up.
RH: But there wasn’t. It was just the two of us out in front of the bunch. So I eased off with about 250 to go and let Mark go through.
Geert Steegmans [of Belgium] managed to pass me as I cruised in, but by then Mark was more than clear. It was the sort of win where there’s no doubt about it at all.
Up until about five kilometres to go it’s fair to say that it was a team effort: we’d all been working flat out as a squad to keep things together for Mark.
Then afterwards, me and him just took off, bouncing our way through the bunch. It wasn’t that technical a finale, though that roundabout was a bit dodgy.
MC: Just after the roundabout Roger was going flat out, to be honest, and that was it. I looked round and there was nobody else. I was really surprised because it was uphill and tough going. But it turned out that as wins go, this one was fairly easy pickings.
My condition’s much better now than when I won Scheldeprijs a few weeks back, like I said then I needed more time to come back from my illnesses in the spring. So I went home and trained for a week and it tipped down with rain, and then I went to Italy [with British Cycling] and it tipped down with rain all week. And then I came here.
So the form’s coming through now, and so are the results.
RH: Why is this team working so well? It’s basically because T-Mobile this year is a bunch of guys who want to race, who like racing, who are motivated. It may sound odd, but that doesn’t always happen in a professional squad. I’ve been in squads where there just isn’t the motivation across the board, where you get guys who don’t want to race. But the more motivation and encouragement you get, the better you feel. So it works.
16 May 2007