The Lotto Kern-Haus team reports on Velomotion from the international Tour of Rhodes (UCI EuropeTour 2.2). With a small diary by Robert W. Kessler you will get exclusive insights into the racing events on site. On today's first stage, Joshua Huppertz narrowly missed out on victory after a long escape.
The tour started today with a stage of 148km and a longer climb. The race started very quickly and was characterized by attacks. So it took a while until finally a group was let go. Joshi kept to the announcements and didn't spare himself for the finish sprint. But that wasn't bad either, because the group was strong, the three teams that were important to us were there, even two of Bardiani's men. Originally, Jonas was also up front, but was unfortunately thrown back into the field due to a defect. After that, the race situation is difficult to describe, neither team wanted to do any follow-up work. This repeatedly led to isolated attacks on the mountain. But none of us got into trouble. When things really got going for a moment, I was catapulted into a forecourt and took a short break, but was able to catch up again without any problems when the field calmed down. Meanwhile, Joshi secured the mountain bonus. After the descent there was a bit of a wind edge, but we drove compactly and no team really tried to tear the field apart. Now a driver from Akros led me to the finish lap and that with a decent stripe. In the meantime, they were no longer in agreement in the group, as the drivers from Sauerland and Dauner no longer wanted to go with them. That's why the Italians attacked and selected 4 men. Things got hectic in the field and Polartec started closing the gap. In the end it was a close thing, but the escapees made it to the finish with 11s. Joshi only had to admit defeat to Mirco Maestri from Bardiani. Unfortunately, we weren't that lucky in the field. Jonas fell 6km (but nothing worse happened) before the finish. Unfortunately, Florian Nowakopolus and I were behind them and had to catch up with the field first. He put me up front, but I couldn't position myself well and lost too many seeds. Accordingly, I did not intervene decisively in the field sprint.
Joshua definitely put on an impressive show today, even if it still didn't work out with the first win of the season! Tomorrow we're going to the mountains. That's what I'm always looking forward to the most, but my mustache is tingling, that can only mean good things for us.
See you
Robert W. Kessler
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