It was my first time in Britain. My first impression was how big the crowds are in the UK. To see how the people support cycling was amazing. Most of the days it was raining and people would still come out and line the roads by the thousands. I’ve seen the crowds in the Tour de France on TV and it was actually the same in the Tour of Britain, if not more.
It was a hard race for us, we were unfortunate to lose three guys so we only ended the race with Sergio, Gerald and I. The three of us got sick after stage 6 too so that wasn’t good. We were like a little army though and we fought on. I’m a climber so there’s not much I can do on the flat stages but when Gerald finished third behind Mark Cavendish, we were not feeling good and I asked him if I should ride on the front and he said no. He didn’t have good legs and wasn’t going to sprint until ten kilometres to go, he changed his mind and started feeling good. We then rushed him to the front and put him in position and he ended up getting third but we maybe could have done better if we didn’t get sick.
The stage up the Haytor, the toughest climb of the race was an interesting day. It was a good stage for us, my job was to look after Sergio and I had to stay behind him the whole time. It’s tricky with only three riders because the previous day I was close to the front of the peloton and Sergio had a puncture behind me and luckily Gerald saw him and gave him his wheel. It took ages for Gerald to get a wheel though as the neutral service passed him and didn’t see him. Luckily the very last car in the convoy saw him. So my job was to stay with Sergio throughout the race, even when he stopped to go to the toilet, I had to stop with him.
Anyway, back to Haytor. I was feeling terrible the whole day and was close to the back of the peloton. When he started the climb it was like my legs switched on quickly and I started feeling really good. I think if I had started the climb in the front of the group, I could have helped Sergio a lot because he was super strong again. I had to go pass many riders who were getting dropped on the climb but by the time I was making my way to the front, the favourites started attacking. Cycling is hard to explain, you’ll feel terrible one day and all of a sudden things will just change. It’s hard to explain. It was still a really good race for us with the stage win and top ten on GC. We’d love to be back for the event as it’s really well organised. The three soldiers at the end enjoyed it.
