CYCLING

Daily Diary: Ambrose talks Turkey - Stage 6

By Aaron S Lee

It was a long day at the office for Team Novo Nordisk neo-pro Scott Ambrose as he helps teammate Javier Mejías vie for top 10 GC result.

SELCUK, Turkey—Spaniard Pello Bilbao (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA) held off Colombians Miguel Ángel López (Astana Pro Team) and Caja Rural-Seguros RGA teammate Heiner Parra over a blistering ascent toward the Presidential Cycling Tour of Turkey stage 6 finish in Selcuk on Friday.

Aside form Bilbao’s stage win, Croatian Kristijan Durasek (Lampre-Merida) lifted the turquoise leaders jersey from Italian Davide Rebellin (CCC Sprandi Polkowice) after a 43-second general classification (GC) swing on the day. Now Rebellin sits 21 seconds down, while Argentean Eduardo Sepulveda (Bretagne-Séché Environnement) and Australian Jay McCarthy (Tinkoff-Saxo) remain in third (+32s) and fourth (+1m14s) respectively.

Colombian Alex Cano (Colombia) has moved into fifth (+1m30s).

“I knew it was the last GC stage, and I knew that I had to try because I had nothing to lose,” said Durasek after the race. “I did the best I could and it went well.

“Now, I’ll just try to keep the jersey. Tomorrow is a hard stage, but not so hard that it will be possible to make a difference in GC.”

For New Zealand new-pro Scott Ambrose (Team Novo Nordisk), the day was a long, but rapid-paced sprint to the finish over the 184-kilometre route from Denizli to Selcuk, with the race finishing in 4 hours 36 minutes and 48 seconds and with an average speed of 39.603 km/h.

Just two days after crashing on stage 4, the 20-year-old Auckland resident held fast and piloted his team GC contender Javier Mejías to finish and remain 11th (+2m22s) behind new race leader Durasek and 2 seconds off Torku Sekerspor rider Tomasz Marczynski of Poland.

NZ Bike caught up with Ambrose, a 2015 Tour of Philippines stage- and points winner, to get the scoop on the day and on his team’s chance to get Mejías into the top 10.

Scott’s diary entry: Stage 6 – Denizli – Selcuk, 184km
I’ve never had a start like we did today. We started on a downhill and we were spinning out our biggest gear possible and trying to get to the front of the bunch. In fact, we were tapping out 130 rpm on the biggest gears we had (53x11) and could have used even bigger.

We attacked and would just go nowhere because everyone was going as fast as they could. It was incredible how fast it was.

Welcome the pros I guess.

We covered about 55 kilometres in an hour. The first 20km were super fast until the day’s breakaway went away and we hit a headwind for the final 160km. It was a tough day both mentally and physically.

We looked after our leader Javier Mejías the whole day, and I pretty much stuck with him until the bottom of the last climb.

We were pretty happy with the execution of our race plan which was to keep kept Javier safe the whole day and out of the wind, which we did really well as we were out on the front literally the whole stage. For me personally, my legs didn’t feel too good today. After the headwind they were pretty dead but we all did our job.

I think it was just one of those days. The headwind is mentally hard for me because I don’t like riding in headwinds and it made for a long day – a very long day.

Although there are two stages remaining in the race, tomorrow’s stage 7 features a category 1 climb just before the finish, and marks our last realistic chance of helping Javier make up some time and reach the top 10.

We will keep him up the front tomorrow on the climbs and hopefully it’s splits and he’s in the lead group. If he is, hopefully he can move up in place on GC, but we will just see how the day pans out.

In the meantime, stay tuned...
-Scott Ambrose







Tomorrow’s entry: Stage 7 – Selcuk – Izmir, 166km
Stage results (top 5)
1. Pello Bilbao (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA)
2. Miguel Ángel López (Astana Pro Team)
3. Heiner Parra (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA)
4. Thomas De Gendt (Lotto Soudal)
5. Alex Cano (Colombia)

General classification (top 5)
1. Kristijan Durasek (Lampre-Merida)                                00”
2. Davide Rebellin (CCC Sprandi Polkowice)                     21”
3. Eduardo Sepulveda (Bretagne-Séché Environnement) 32”
4. Jay McCarthy (Tinkoff-Saxo)                                       1’14”
5. Alex Cano (Colombia)                                                  1’30”

Aaron S. Lee is a cycling and triathlon columnist for Eurosport and a guest contributor to NZ Bike Magazine.