Giro d’Italia – Stage 19 – Roger Kluge «We must still survive two more climbs before thinking of helping Heinrich Haussler win on Sunday in Milan»

The peloton of the Giro d’Italia was scattered all over the road from Gravellona Toce to Cervinia.  And no wonder since after nearly three weeks of racing, the peloton still managed to cover 98kilometers in two hours, not to mention the extremely difficult climbs on schedule for the day, which meant that the fragmented pack gave Fabio Aru (Astana) a chance to have a prestigious victory at Cervin.  Alberto Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo), still dressed in pink, relinquished 1’18” of his lead to the Italian.  For its part, IAM Cycling did not shine as it had in the breakaway of the day before, though Sylvain Chavanel was again its best finisher.  In 46^th place, nearly 23 minutes behind the day’s winner, Chavanel was the first of his teammates, all of whom made it within the time limit of one hour nine minutes.

Roger Kluge, who came in 57’14” after Aru, was nevertheless still able to smile and keep his good humor in spite of having spent seven tough hours in the saddle.  “I was not fast enough to go in the break.  So I mostly managed my efforts in order to be able to finish my first Giro.  It was not easy because we were soon lonely on our own.  Now we must still survive two climbs before thinking of helping Heinrich Haussler to win on Sunday in Milan.  We will do everything in our power to make that happen.  But I can assure you that this has been the hardest race of my career.  Frankly, the Tour de France last year was much less difficult.”

Kjell Carlström, directeur sportif for IAM Cycling along with Rubens Bertogliati, gave his explanations for the on-going brawl of this third week. “Everyone wants to be in the breakaway in order to get a win, or even a second place like Philippe Gilbert yesterday.  This means that there are attacks as soon as the flag is dropped for the start of the stage, even when there are climbs on the menu.  Today, we didn’t have anyone in the break that formed after 50 kilometers of trying.  From that moment, the guys knew the best thing to do would be to relax and manage their efforts in view of the last two stages.  The idea really was to lose as much time as possible without being outside the limit.  That will be our tactic more or less on Saturday too, in order to save our strength for Sunday which is a stage reserved for the sprinter.  With Heinrich Haussler on our team, we can still hope to have the success of achieving a stage win finally in this Giro.”