DYLAN TEUNS
“I’ve done the Tour of the Basque Country and I’ve found it an ideal tune- up for the hilly Classics”
Well, it’s been a very hard week in the Tour of the Basque Country. It’s hardly the easiest race on the calendar but for us on BMC it started to go adrift on the first day. My team-mate, Damiano Caruso, crashed into a parked car and I had two mechanicals which sent me right down the GC. I had a second bike change with 30km to go – the worst moment – so I was really stuffed when the race got hot on the second last climb. Truly a day to forget.
I started to move back up the general classification in the final few stages. I was fourth on the final day which finished at Arrate after a very hard 3km climb, but I couldn’t quite make it back into the top 10 and I ended up finishing 11th. Still, at least I could see I was going in the right direction and I remain on track for the Ardennes races. You’ve got to see the positives where you can. It’s the second time I’ve done the Tour of the Basque Country and I’ve found it an ideal tune-up for the hilly Classics, as there’s a mix of good, wide roads and small, narrow technical ones. Many of the climbs are on small roads where it’s difficult to move up the group – a bit like the ones you get in Wallonia.
I tried to see as much of the cobbled Classics as possible. I scheduled my training so I could watch pretty much everything. There’s no hiding from the fact that Quick-Step have been super impressive all spring. To have won 24 races before the cobbled races are even over says they are doing a lot of things right. I can see the logic in the idea that since Tom Boonen retired, it’s freed up the other riders. They have, what, four cards to play? But Quick-Step have always raced with an open spirit like this, even when Boonen was there – as when Niki Terpstra won Paris-Roubaix in 2014.
From the Basque Country it’s now just a question of managing my form as best I can. There won’t be much intensity in my training and I can rely on the races to provide what I need. I call it a period of R&R: racing and resting. It seems like I’ve been waiting for the hilly Classics to arrive for ages. They’re almost here and I really can’t wait.