Cavendish: Tuft Has Ride of the Millenium
Posted March 9, 2012 2:35 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
By: Dean Campbell, CTVOlympics.ca Staff
Although Mark Cavendish won the second stage of the 2012 Tirreno Adriatico, the world champion road cyclist said that the ride of the millennium went to Canadian Svein Tuft, after leading the peloton continuously for more than 190kms.
“Ride of the day.. No, make that ride of the millennium, goes to GreenEDGE’s Svein Tuft. 200km ALONE controlling the peloton! Respect,” said Cavendish, via Twitter.
Tuft took a few minutes with his team after the stage to talk about what it was like to put in such a mammoth ride.
“I felt good today, so the plan was to put my face in the wind,” said Tuft, who was the lead rider in the peloton from about the 10km mark. “It’s just what happened.”
By the time he relinquished the lead, Tuft said “it was a little blurry at that point,” and he dropped back to cross the finish well back from the lead. Having given his team a solid effort, teammate Matthew Goss retained the leader’s jersey.
At the finish, the peloton had held an average speed of over 35km/h for the full 230km stage. The effort to keep the pace at that level saw Tuft burn through an estimated 6500 calories – roughly equivalent to three days of suggested food consumption for an average person.
“You can never put in that much, but you can really try. I tried pretty good,” said Tuft. “I’ll hope for a rest day tomorrow.”
Team GreenEDGE has enjoyed an excellent start to the Tirreno Adriatico, winning the team time trial on the opening day, and Goss retaining the lead. Although it is the first year on the World Tour for the team, they have already shown a form that indicates they could be regular contenders in the UCI WorldTour.
“It was really important for GreenEDGE,” said Tuft of the team time trial performance. “No matter what the guys would have been happy no matter where we placed because we did a perfect ride. The result was awesome because we really smashed it. In team time trials, that doesn’t happen so often. It’s a good example of the strength we have here.
“Everyone gets along so easy, so when we’re making those tricky decisions of how to roll in the team time trial, it’s not a problem.”
Tuft is back on the UCI WorldTour with Australian team, GreenEDGE Cycling, after spending a season with the Canadian continental team, SpiderTech. He is the reigning Canadian road cycling and time trial champion.
The Tirreno Adriatico finishes on Tuesday.
