Koen's report of the 1st stage of the Tour of Qatar

Finally the season has begun, after several months of hard training and some small criterium races, the 2012 season finally has started. I've participated in the Tour of Qatar several times now and pretty much every time the race is decided by the wind as well as with a time trial or a team time trial. The team time trial comes tomorrow but today we expected the wind. 141 flat kilometres in the open desert, like it always is.

The wind wasn't too bad, yesterday when we went for a spin we were hardly able to get a speed above 20km/h but the flags were not blowing as much this morning. Of course it is Qatar and most of the peloton expects wind so the race was really nervous because everyone wanted to be at the front so that they would be part of the first group if the peloton splintered. Sure enough half way through the race, just after a bend, there was a crash and then a strong side wind and after that there we peloton was in 5 groups on the road to Doha. Due to the crash, where I had to really brake hard to avoid, I was in the second group but we were never really far from the leading group and after about 10km of chasing we closed the gap. For the final 30km we had the wind at our backs and the peloton stalled and all the groups came back together.

It was going to be a mass sprint and the plan today was that our team would bring John Degenkolb to the front with Veelers being the last man, and I would ride just before Veelers and the rest of the team for me. We were going to go to the front of the peloton with 5km to go and take the initiative from the final bend with 1km to the finish. To cut a long story short, everything was going perfect to plan until 1400m from the finish, when six of us were together from the 8th place from the front, pretty much the perfect place to take the initiative but unfortunately we waited too long and we were closed in. I managed to weave my way out but unfortunately without Veelers and Degenkoln. I did everything I could to try to help them but it was a lost cause. Shame of course but it can happen with the first race of the year and with new riders together, it takes a bit of time to fine tune the mass sprint. We need to gel together more and for it to be automatic to bring the other guys in the team together, hopefully that will happen soon!

Tomorrow as I was saying is a team time trial, a good 11km near by the motor circuit of Qatar.

Greetings Koen