'Starting from behind always a problem,' says Trek-Segafredo leader
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Alberto Contador speaks during his pre-Vuelta a Espana press conference (Image credit: Michael Aisner)
Alberto Contador with his new Trek Emonda SLR(Image credit: Trek)
Alberto Contador hits the stage for his final pre-race teams presentation(Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
Thumbs up from Sep Vanmarcke (Cannondale-Drapac) for the winning Trek-Segafredo team(Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
Alberto Contador (Trek-Segafredo) at the Tour de France(Image credit: Michael Aisner)
Alberto Contador (Trek-Segafredo) described himself as only partly satisfied with his opening team time trial result Saturday at the Vuelta a Espana, which saw his squad lose a hefty 35 seconds on BMC Racing Team.
The difference with Team Sky was marginally less - 26 seconds - and exactly half the 52 seconds Contador's squad lost last year on the British squad in the opening team time trial in Galicia. But even so, as Contador recognised this was not the start he would have liked for his last-ever Grand Tour.
"In comparison with last year, it's not so bad, but it's still a lot of time," Contador said after the Nimes team time trial. "Starting from behind is always a problem, but let's take this on the day by day. My team gave it everything they've got, and we went as fast as we could."
A ragged finale, though, did not allow Contador's team to maintain the promising early start to the TTT they'd made, although the Spaniard pointed out that one of the key things they wanted to avoid were crashes - and in that, they'd been successful.
"It was a very dangerous time trial course. This morning there were some crashes, and we've decided to take things as safely as possible. We preferred to lose a bit of time and be safer as a result, but it's also true that 25 seconds are a lot of seconds."
Contador expressed his thanks for the gestures of support he received along the way, but as he pointed out, "I have two objectives here. One I'm sure I'll get, and that's enjoying the race. The other one is to fight for it." And on that particular front, there's no denying his start in Nimes represents a setback.
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Alasdair Fotheringham has been reporting on cycling since 1991. He has covered every Tour de France since 1992 bar one, as well as numerous other bike races of all shapes and sizes, ranging from the Olympic Games in 2008 to the now sadly defunct Subida a Urkiola hill climb in Spain. As well as working for Cyclingnews, he has also written for The Independent, The Guardian, ProCycling, The Express and Reuters.
