Will Joaquim Rodriguez mark a Tour de France return in 2013?
Joaquim Rodriguez Oliver has missed the past two editions of the Tour de France and the cyclist is now considering a come-back at the second Grand Tour race of the season next year.
The decision came after attending the Giro d’Italia 2013 presentation ceremony in Milan as the cyclist believe that the next year’s Giro does not suit his abilities and he would prefer riding in France instead.
However, the it has not yet been finalised and will only be made after analysing the Tour de France 2013 parcours, ceremony scheduled later in October 2012.
Rodriguez noted that the 2013 edition of the Italian race has too many time trialling kilometres which can cost him a lot of time as over 200 kilometres of time trialling can definitely prove fatal towards his goal of an overall victory.
"The Giro is very complicated, the time trial is very long and I'll lose a lot of time on it," he told Russia's R-Sport.
"There are six stages over 200 kilometers, including the final in Brescia”.
“I like to race in Italy where I have many fans but I'm waiting for the route of the Tour study my participation, but of course that's if Katusha approves".
The 33-year-old’s last appearance at the Tour was back in 2010 and his performance was not that bad considering it was his first appearance at the French event.
He finished 10 minutes and 58 seconds behind the awarded race leader Andy Schleck after the disqualification for Alberto Contador because of his doping scandal.
Denis Menchov of Team Rabobank, Samuel Sanchez Gonzalez of Team Euskaltel-Euskadi and Jurgen Van Den Broeck of Team Omega Pharma-Lotto achieved the third, fourth and the fifth positions respectively.
Dutch rider, Robert Gesink of Team Rabobank and the Canadian Cyclist Ryder Hesjedal of Team Katusha occupied the sixth and the seventh positions respectively.
Joaquim holds as many as 15 Grand Tour appearances under his belt including five Giro Ad’Italia, one Tour de France and an astonishing number of nine Vuelta a Espana participations under his belt.
Despite having so much Grand Tour involvements, one thing that the cyclist miss is an overall victory as his best performance at the all the three-week races was a second place finish at the Giro d’Italia 2012.
Rodriguez’ is having an outstanding season and has filled his bag with several victories in the first half of the season including stage victories at the Giro d’Italia, the Tour of the Basque Country, the Vuelta a Espana and the Tirreno-Adriatico 2012.
His most recent victory came during the last World Tour race of the season, the Giro di Lombardia when he defeated Samuel Sanchez and Rigoberto Uran in the final sprint.
“For me, winning Lombardy in itself would have been a great win, but obviously when there are more strong riders, it adds value to the win,” Rodriguez said after winning the race.
“Alberto was very strong at the Worlds last week and in Milan-Turin, but it wasn’t just him, there were also riders like Nibali and Gilbert in the race.”
Winning the Giro di Lombardia helped the Spaniard with a first overall position after the UCI World Tour Individual rankings with as many as 692 UCI points.
Bradley Wiggins is now dropped down to the second position with 601 points while Tom Boonen (410 points), Vincenzo Nibali (400 points) and Alejandro Valverde (394) occupied the next three positions in the respective order.
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