Porte: Stronger for riding the Giro
Tasmanian says Contador i🌃s ready to defend Tour crown
For the first time this season, 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Saxo Bank SunGard's 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Richie Porte is feeling healthy, having banished his troublesome allergies which dogged the early part of his season. Ahead of his de✨but at the Tour de France, the Tasmanian says he "pretꦇty psyched."
"I had two weeks there where I was in the post-Grand Tour ‘mood' but after that two weeks the body starts to recover and now I feel better than before I went into the Giro," the 26-year-old told Cyclingnews. "I'm much stronger than what I was before."
The decision to start Porte in the 🌳Giro had been last minute but it was all in aid of giving the talented Australian more experience at the highest level. Sure, the results were very diffe🎃rent to the 2010 edition where Porte wore the maglia rosa for three days and went home as winner of the young rider classification and maintained a position in the top 10 of the general classification for the entire duration of the race, but the decision has given him a certain confident heading into his third Grand Tour.
"It was an honour to ride in a winning team," Porte said. "Guys go through their whole career without having to do that. It's an enjoyable experience to r⭕ide for Alberto [Contador]. He's the best stage racer of his generation and he's happy🐼 for you when you ride for him."
Porte's preparation for the Tour has been all about keeping fresh, both in body and in mind, splitting his training between the French Alps, doing wha♕t he calls "mindless climbing" at altitude and around his home in Monaco.
While there have been some question marks over Porte's teammate, defending Tour de France champion 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Alberto Contador's ability to string two Grand Tour wins together, particularly given the taxing parcours of the Giro, the Tasmanian dismisses the idea that it will be a tired Saxo Bank team that rolls up in Vendee.
"I know guys who rode the Dauphine and the Tour de Suisse and they were hard races too," Porte countered. "They are probably on the back foot a little bit compared to us. We've ౠhad a month to recover. Alberto was just second and third in Nationals, while it's totally different to a Grand Tour, it's Alberto Contador, I think he's ready for a good♏ Tour."
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Much like his Giro campaign, Porte's focus at the Tour de France will be on assisting Contador, especially in the mountains. The Australian is hoping to be of morꦺe use than he was in May's race, mixing it up with Spaniards Jesus Hernandez and Daniel Navarro, which Porte♔ describes as "a tight unit."
However, while there's not much room for solo heroics, Porte's hoping to put in a strong performance during the 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Grenoble time trial, on the Tour's penultimate day. It's a situation that irks 🤪him somew🃏hat.
"The thing is, I don't really see myself as a pure time trialist w൲hich is what the results suggest," he explained. Porte finished just 43 seconds down on winner, David 𝔉Millar (Sky Procycling) at the Milan time trial at the Giro.
Despite this, Porte doesn't deny he's ey💮eing yet another impressive result in Grenoble.
"I've done the parcours in Grenoble and it's really very hard and it comes off the back of some hard mountain stages," he said. "It suits me a lot more than what the Milan one did and my condition is a lot better going into this once so I'll just see what happens. It's going to be hard to have personal opportunities but I think that one is always going to be a goal for me."
As a sports journalist and producer since 1🔯997, Jane has covered Olympic and Commonwealth Games, rugby league, motorsport, cricket, surfing, triathlon, rugby 💖union, and golf for print, radio, television and online. However her enduring passion has been cycling.
Jane is a former Australian Editor of Cyclingnews from 2011 to 2𒈔013 and continues to freelance within the cycling industry.