Dylan Van Baarle returns to the Tour of Britain with the number one on his back as defending champion, and the Cannondale-Garmin youngster spoke about his achievement last year and his hopes for this year’s race with the race’s website.
"It was a really big win for me and still the best result of my career,” the Dutchman told the Tour of Britain website. “The victory earned a lot of coverage at home. Not only was the race watched quite a bit on the TV but the fact that I ended up ahead of big name riders like Kwiatkowski and Wiggins attracted extra attention.”
“Off the back of that result I earned a place in the Netherlands team for the World Championships so I have nothing but good memories of the 2014 Tour of Britain.”
Van Baarle, 23, explained that he wasn’t going for GC last year and didn’t even read the road book, but when he got on course he was pleased to find out the race was like the Classics, hard, fast and long, which suited him.
"I arrived knowing little of the terrain but had mistakenly believed it would be mainly sprints so I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of the stages were like one-day Classics, which played into my strength. I didn't suffer too badly on the main climb in Wales and then on that last long stage into Brighton the cards fell my way and I found myself in yellow.”
Once more he is using the race to try and secure form before he rides another Worlds for Holland, where the team has to attack to try and win, the jersey, which Van Baarle says suits his preparation as he can mimic this in Britain.
"The Worlds course seems in the balance to me. It could be a sprint finish or it could be one for the Classics type riders. In the Dutch team we don't really have a big sprint card to play so we probably need to make it a hard-ridden, Classics type race and to give ourselves a chance of somebody coming through. We will need to be super fit and ride aggressively and the Tour of Britain suits me perfectly as a preparation for that. It will be good to be back.”
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