12 February 2013
IAM Cycling
“Stage 1 is now behind us and it was really a lot different from what we saw in Qatar.
There wasn’t that much wind and with some more climbers in the bunch, there was immediately a two men breakaway that could go. They almost reached a 10 minutes gap before the peloton started chasing them back and were relatively easily reeled back in.
Our goal for today was to let Johann Tschopp get back into racing again after the winter and to help Kristof Goddaert perform in the sprint.
The guys did a good job for Krsitof before the sprint and he ended up in a good position with little to go. He hesitated a little bit around 350 meters before the finish, but he could anyway get an 8th place.
That was a good start to the Tour of Oman.
Tomorrow and Wednesday stages will most probably end up in bunch sprints, even if the group might be a little bit reduced by some of the short climbs of the routes.
Of course there is also always the chance of a breakaway, but with several good sprinters that can climb good, it should actually be a straight forward race.”
