19 August 2022

Thibault Guernalec: "An incredible crowd”

Thibault Guernalec rode his first day on a Major Tour during the team time trial in Utrecht which launched the Vuelta 2022. Here is the story.

 

Photo Aubin Lipke-Arkéa Samsic

Thibault Guernalec

On the line

 

“It was great! There was a lot of public, we were like in a stadium. We couldn’t hear Yvon because there was so much shouting on the side of the road. It was an incredible crowd over 23 kilometres. We achieved a good time at our level. We played it safe with the rain falling lightly. To fall on the first stage of a Grand Tour would have been to shoot ourselves in the foot. We did a clean start and then we sent it on the straights. We all finished with a taste of blood in our mouths, which means we did a time trial and gave it our all. We have nothing to regret.

Elie Gesbert

“In the first part of the city we had a little bit of rain, so we took the option of riding in a somewhat dangerous urban sector. This made us lose a bit of time. We set off on the second part which was more rolling. We don’t have a team of specialists but we did well with seven riders in this inaugural team time trial of the Vuelta a España 2022”.

Sébastien Hinault

The debrief’

 

“We did a clean team time trial. The objective was to do the best time possible with this wet road at the start. The riders started moderately, but then they started to work hard. We set a good time, what we wanted was to launch our Vuelta 2022 in a good dynamic. That’s what we managed to do in this team time trial”.

Riders

Thibault Guernalec
Elie Gesbert