Alexandr Pliuschin sets sight on his second grand tour, Vuelta a Espana – Cycling Update
The Moldavian Champion Alexandr Pliuschin is setting his eyes to Vuelta a Espana as he is keen to start his second grand tour race after Tour de France.
Pliuschin told a famous cycling website that he is looking forward to support the team captain Joaquin Rodriguez and will provide him with the best opportunity of winning the event as he believed that his team is very strong for the coming event.
The 24-year-old started his career rather unnoticed in the first two seasons as he did not perform that well with AG2R-La Mondiale as he said, “When you are strong in juniors and can’t race at the same level once you’ve turned professional, when you have
some crashes, it’s not easy.”
In 2007, the Moldavian won the Under 23 Tour of Flanders and his performance was clearly improving after joining team Katusha, as during the Tour of Austria in July he finished third in the stage 4 followed by a good Tour of Poland in August. Pliuschin commented
on his current form as he said, “I’m in good shape, I did a long training camp in the mountains before, so I miss a bit of freshness but I try to reach my best level for the Vuelta.”
In 2010 Pliuschin joined team Katusha but was not very comfortable adjusting with the squad although he was fully supported by his team-mates. He mentioned that, his whole team along with Andrei Tchmil supported him as much as they could and advised him
that he will adapt to the change slowly and he should not rush himself in to this. Pliuschin found it difficult to adjust with the change as he had quite a tense time at the start of his career until one year ago.
Vuelta a Espana is starting on August 20 with a 16 kilometre time trial stage 1 at Benidorm. Race will finish in Madrid with a 94 kilometre stage 21 on September 11 after a total of 3295 kilometres of cycling.
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