Nyhetsartiklar
Cancellara Wins in Denmark; Voigt in Yellow in Germany
den 8 augusti 2006
It was another wild day for Team CSC in racing action Sunday.
Team CSC’s Fabian Cancellara scored an important “home race” victory in the Tour of Denmark while Jens Voigt received an unexpected bonus by earning the overall leader’s jersey at the Tour of Germany.
All Cancellara had to do was finish safely with the main pack to secure his first major stage race victory of his career. The 25-year-old won two stages en route to victory.
“It’s been a fantastic week for us and it was great for everyone to reach Copenhagen with the leader’s jersey,” Cancellara said. “We’ve felt huge support from the spectators and there’s no doubt that Denmark has a truly great stage race, a race that measure up to the international ones.”
Team CSC’s Stuart O’Grady finished third in the final stage in Copenhagen and claimed second overall. Team CSC also won the team’s prize to round out a fabulous week for the team with deep Danish roots.
Cancellara’s victory marks the fourth time in five years a Team CSC rider has won Denmark’s most important race.
“We’ve lived up to our ambitions and had a really great week in Denmark. It’s been nice to take part in a race at home and we’ve experienced a really enthusiastic audience,” said Team CSC sports director Dan Frost. “We’ve had good tactics throughout the race and took advantage of the fact that we were the strongest team. The riders worked perfectly together and it’s thanks to the entire team that we’re able to celebrate victory again this year.”
Over at the Tour of Germany, Voigt was the happy benefactor of the decision to remove the day’s hardest climb due to inclement weather and bounded to a strong fourth place to snag the overall leader’s jersey.
Voigt, a winner in stage two, was able to stay with the strongest in the final climb to the finish to sneak into the leader’s jersey. Team CSC’s Andy Schleck and Iñigo Cuesta attacked early, but American Levi Leipheimer responded on the day’s summit finish to earn the stage victory.
“Jens had a hard time keeping up when Leipheimer attacked, but he sat with (Vladimir) Gusev for awhile, who ended up burning out all of a sudden, then Jens bridged up to a couple of others who were pursuing Leipheimer,” said Team CSC’s sport director Kim Andersen.
Monday’s difficult climbing stage could turn the race upside down, but Team CSC has Cuesta well-positioned in the top five in case Voigt can’t hang with the climbers in the grueling mountain stage across the Austrian Alps.
High winds and cold temperatures prompted riders to protest race conditions and organizers buckled under the pressure and rerouted Sunday’s stage. Andersen said that will not likely to happen Monday.
“They didn’t want to cross the biggest climb because they said the descent was way too dangerous in that weather, but that’s debatable I guess,” Andersen said. “The organizers did underline the fact that the same thing will not be happening tomorrow. They’ll have to climb all the mountains – including the hors category one.”
The Tour of Germany continues through Wednesday while Team CSC reloads Saturday with the one-day Clásica San Sebastián in Spain.
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