CYCLING

Daily Diary: Ambrose talks Turkey - Stage 2

By Aaron S Lee

Kiwi Scott Ambrose shares the inside scoop exclusively with NZ Bike on Team Novo Nordisk from the second day of the Tour of Turkey.

ANTALYA, Turkey—It’s hard to beat the world’s ‘fastest man on two wheels’ in a sprint finish, and apparently the rest of pro peloton agrees as British sprinter Mark Cavendish (Etixx-QuickStep) rolled to his second victory in as many days at the 51st Presidential Cycling Tour of Turkey.

However, before the ‘Missile’ could fire through the final 100 metres the race was lit up by three riders: Lluis Mas (Caja Rural - RGA), Adrien Niyonshuti (MTN - Qhubeka), Frederik Veuchelen (Wanty - Groupe Gobert). That initial break was soon joined by Kevin De Mesmaeker (Team Novo Nordisk) and Federico Zurlo (UnitedHealthcare).

The quintet formed the break for the majority of the race before being reeled in with 12km to go.

For 20-year-old New Zealand neo-pro Scott Ambrose (Team Novo Nordisk), it was business as usual as he recorded a bunch time and still sits with equal time on general classification.

Afterwards, the Tour of Philippines stage- and points winner sat down with NZ Bike Magazine to give his personal account of all the action on day two, before the eight-day stage race takes a turn uphill with three catagorised climbs, including a Cat 1 finish in Elmali.

Scott’s diary entry: Stage 2 - Alanya - Antalya, 182km
Today was a good stage for our team. We were all aggressive at the start, and with all of us attacking it paid off getting Kevin De Mesmaeker in the break, and that was our first team goal achieved. From there it was a case of keeping our lead riders protected for the rest of the race.

The starts are super-aggressive with each team wanting to get into the breakaway and show off their jersey in the front of the race and on TV. Today was a case of all of our riders covering all the moves and attacks from the opposing teams and hoping that one of them will come off, and in case it does, it stays away. In Kevin’s case he attacked and stayed away for a while, which was perfect for us.

The sprint in the end was pretty hectic and unfortunately we missed out on a result, but we had Kevin in the break all day, which was good to get the team jersey some airtime and represent Team Novo Nordisk.

For me personally, I felt good today. It was a long, flat stage and most of it was in the gutter because of the wind. I recently came back from the Volta Ciclística Internacional do Rio Grande do Sul in Brasil and the whole race was in the crosswinds, so I’m a bit more confident in the crosswinds now.

As I said, the course was flat for the whole 182 kilometres. We mainly headed along the coast up towards Antalya, and it was a hot day and we went through a few towns that were pretty cool with lots of crowds along the side of the road, which always lifts your mood on a long day in the saddle.

To be honest, I’m looking forward to stage 3, even though I’m not sure how my climbing legs are at the moment. I’m going in to it open minded. My intention is to be there to help our team leader, Javier Mejias, up the climb.

At the moment I’m still learning what my specialty is, so maybe I’ll have good climbing legs or maybe I won’t – either way we’ll find out soon.

Javier feels good, and he went really well last year and was up with the leaders and attacked close to the finish. I think he’s looking to improve on that and the team is all behind him, so hopefully we can pull off a good result.

As I said in yesterday’s diary entry, the Republic of Turkey is amazing in terms of food, landscape and hospitality – but the language? I don’t understand a word of Turkish. It’s nothing similar to English. I just get around using sign language, which is something you get pretty good at when you race bikes around the world.

Trying to get a coffee is pretty much dialled in using gestures now. That being said, I can’t wait to get stuck into some Vegemite, flat whites and Watties T-Sauce in a few weeks. Not combined obviously!

Until then, stay tuned…

-Scott Ambrose





Tomorrow’s entry: Stage 3 – Kemer – Elmali, 165km
Stage results (top 5)
1. Mark Cavendish (Etixx - Quick Step)
2. Sacha Modolo (Lampre - Merida)
3. Nicola Ruffoni (Lampre - Merida)
4. Sebastián Molano (Team Colomibia)
5. Daniele Colli (Nippo - Vini Fantini)

General classification (top 5)
1. Mark Cavendish (Etixx - Quick Step)
2. Sacha Modolo (Lampre - Merida)
3. Nicola Ruffoni (Lampre - Merida)
4. Michael Kolář (Tinkoff - Saxo)
5. Ahmet Orken (Torku - Sekerspor)

Aaron S. Lee is a cycling and triathlon columnist for Eurosport and a guest contributor to NZ Bike Magazine.  Image credit: Kei Tsuji | Tim De Waele