Roman Kreuziger - Team Liquigas

Roman is ninth!

Thu July 22, 2010, 19:39

Roman has moved up to ninth place overall after the hell of a stage with the finish on Tourmalet. He finished in tenth position losing 2:14 minutes on the winner Schleck.

"I think that I can be relatively satisfied. I distributed my strength sensibly on the last climb and used my head during the stage. At first, I was dropped from the second group but then, after a kilometer, I rejoined them again. I began to lose the contact with one and half kilometers to go and slipped back when Rodriguez attacked. I wasn’t able to keep the pace up but all in all, I have a good feeling about it," Roman said. 
"I didn’t want to burn myself up so that I could finish at the front. I may say that I was riding my own time trial up there. Too bad, I was unable to stay in the group until the finish but I have moved up to top ten, which was my objective. Now I have to save some energy for the time trial and I hope the sun will come out again. Today the temperature was reaching 12 degrees on Tourmalet, the roads were wet due to the night rain and some descents were really dangerous. I believe that I will handle the time trial even though I am aware of the fact that remaining in top ten won’t be easy. " 
17th stage (174 km): 1st A. Schleck (Lux/Saxo Bank) 5:03:29, 2nd Contador (Spa/Astana), 3rd Rodriguez (Spa/Katusa) +1:18, 4th Hesjedal (Can/Garmin) +1:27, 5th S. Sánchez (Spa/Euskaltel) +1:32, 6th Mensov (Rus/Rabobank), 7th Gesink (Ned/Rabobank) both +1:40, 8th Horner (USA/RadioShack) +1:45, 9th Van den Broeck (Bel/Lotto) +1:48, 10th Roman Kreuziger (CZE/Liquigas) +2:14.  
Overall: 1st Contador 83:32:39, 2nd A. Schleck +8, 3rd S. Sánchez +3:32, 4th Mensov +3:53, 5th Van den Broeck +5:27, 6th Gesink +6:41, 7th Rodriguez +7:03, 8th Hesjedal +9:18, 9th Roman Kreuziger +10:12, 10th Horner +10:37.

This article is also translated :
Roman je devátý!