Martijn Maaskant hopes to turn his good performance in the fifth stage of the Tour de Suisse into a place on the Garmin-Transitions Tour de France squad. The Dutch rider finished second to BMC Racing Team's Marcus Burghardt, and was both disappointed and satisfied.
“Maybe I should have attacked earlier,” he told the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf. “If we had arrived in a sprint, I would probably have been the fastest.”
The knowledge that Maaskant was the best in a sprint was probably part of Burghardt's motivation to attack just before the flamme rouge. Maaskant gave chase but finished two seconds behind the big German.
However, Maaskant, 26, was satisfied with respect to a probable Tour de France participation. “I think now that they really want to take me,” he said. “They told me I needed to show good form in the Tour de Suisse. I showed that with my second place.”
Maaskant rode the Tour last year as a last-minute replacement, finishing fourth in stage 14.
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