John Degenkolb to ride the Tour de France 2013 in Team Argos-Shimano colours
John Degenkolb has managed to make room for himself in the busy Team Argos-Shimano 2013 roster and will be seen in the Dutch team’s colours for 2013.
Team Manager Rudi Kemna was delighted to have the young German on his squad and noted that cyclists like John are truly the race winners and are of great importance to the team.
Rudi plans to send him at the Tour de France 2013 and believes that the team has strong chances with John during the French Grand Tour.
He could not make it through to the final Tour squad for the 2012 season because of his busy Olympics and Vuelta a Espana campaign where he proved his mettle in-front of the fully packed arena.
“A rider like John belongs in the Tour. This season he has shown the level he can do,” team manager Rudi Kemna told nusport.nl.
“He's only 23 and with the Olympics and the Vuelta on his program, that was more than enough”.
The cyclist had to return empty-handed form the 2012 Olympics Games but he made full use of the opportunity given to ride the Vuelta a Espana and bagged as many as five stages at the race and also managed to finish fourth at the UCI Road World Championships.
The 23-year old claimed two stages and an overall victory at the Tour de Picardie 2012 along with a first place finish at the Grand Prix D’Isbergues.
He succeeded during the first and the second stages of the Four Days of Dunkirk and also managed to claim the third overall position at the race.
The cyclist succeeded during the seventh stage of the Tour of Pologne but the main reason behind his world-wide fame is the extraordinary display of his abilities in the third and the last Grand Tour of the season, the Vuelta a Espana 2012.
He succeeded during the second, fifth, seventh, tenth and the twenty first stages of the Vuelta and became the first ever German rider to bag five stages in a single Vuelta a Espana.
“I’m really unbelievably happy with five victories,” Degenkolb said afterwards.
“As the first German to take five stages of the Vuelta, it’s pretty good to be making history, too”.
It’s been a very hard Vuelta, everybody is pretty tired, including me, and I’ve not had an easy time on the climbs in the last few days”.
“But we were willing to suffer as a team and focus 100 percent on my sprint for one last time”.
After spending three years (2008-10) with the Amateur side, Thuringer Energie, John was given an offer from the American side, Team HTC-Highroad in 2011.
He helped the team with numerous top performances in the previous season and had to find a new side to continue his professional endeavours since the team announced its exit from professional cycling.
Degenkolb managed to get his name on Team Argos-Shimano roaster for the 2012 season and he his tremendous performance to secure over a dozen victories in the season has earned him at least one more year with the Dutch side.
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