After a tough season with Tinkoff-Saxo ended with a victory in the penultimate stage of the USA Pro Challenge, Roman Kreuziger has pushed the reset button for 2016 and is once more ready to lay it all on the line for Alberto Contador to achieve his dreams in what may be his last year as a pro.
“It’s now about recovering and I’ll keep it like this until the middle of November. Then I’ll start racing in February. After doing some races with Peter [Sagan], like Strade Bianche and Milan-San Remo, I’ll race Basque Country and then the Ardennes. Then I’ll do Suisse and then the Tour,” he told Cyclingnews at a Tinkoff-Saxo training camp in Croatia.
Just like team leader Contador, Czech rider Kreuziger will skip the Giro d’Italia, peaking for the Tour de France and Olympic Games. Contador wants one last Tour before he leaves the sport, and Kreuziger will likely be his last man in the mountains.
“No Giro next year, definitely not, and what we saw this year was that it cost too much energy and we couldn’t come to the Tour with a fresh mind. I wasn’t exhausted at the start of the Tour, and at the beginning you don’t feel it because you’re motivated with a rider like Alberto Contador in the team. We missed some energy and the Giro-Tour, or Tour-Vuelta, is very hard.”
While Kreuziger says that team leader Contador knows “we’re 100 per cent there for him”, Kreuziger will get chances to lead Tinkoff-Saxo as one of the team’s best riders, along with Contador, Sagan and Rafal Majka.
“I think I’ll do the Ardennes, Suisse, and Tirreno, I’ll race for myself. I want to have a repeat season to the one that I had in 2013. Also my contract is up next year I have my feet on the ground and I hope to be back to where I was before. I hope the good years are coming.”
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