| | By Fred Rodriguez
Special to ABC Sports Online
American cyclist Fred Rodriguez currently rides for the Italian Mapei team -- ranked the number one team in the world for the past three years. In just his fifth year riding professionally, Rodriguez won the US Professional Championships in Philadelphia on June 4. Over the next several weeks, Rodriguez will take you through his first Tour de France -- sharing with you the ins and outs of the world's preeminent cycling event.
The whole excitement of getting to my first Tour de France really culminated on Saturday before the race. Questions like, "Am I ready" and "Did I train hard enough" were circling through my head. Usually, I'm pretty relaxed during my warm-up, but I was in serious concentration mode on Saturday.
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Fred Rodriguez' teammate Tom Steels (right) won Stage One despite feeling under the weather. |
I was definitely amazed by all of the media hoopla surrounding the race. Coming from where I do, I'm not used to that kind of media frenzy, so by the time the trials started, I was pretty anxious to get the race started.
The time trial was a good one for me. I finished in 27th place -- 58 seconds off the lead -- but I don't think I did quite as well as I could have. I was so amped up and ready to go at the beginning of the race, I think I tapped my maximum effort a little too quick and I paid for it. I had to back off a bit in the middle portion of the race, but I recovered pretty well at the end and pulled off a good ride. Overall, I was happy with how things went on Saturday.
Stage Two was a completely different race than the time trials, just because you're out there competing with the rest of the field as opposed to riding against the clock.
I had some pretty bad stomach problems today. It was really hot towards the end of the race and I drank some of this malta drink which is heavy on carbohydrates. I shouldn't have done that so late in the race. It gave me some stomach cramps, and I didn't finish as well as I would have liked.
But my number one job today was to keep my teammate Tom Steels protected throughout the race, and make sure that he was going to be as fresh as possible for the finish. I'm somewhat disappointed that I wasn't really there in the end to help him win, but he ended up winning the stage anyway.
While I could've rode a better race, I'm really excited for Tom. He got sick a few days ago and had to take a day off from training, so we weren't really expecting this from him. As a team, we wanted to do our best to help Tom, however, we also knew that there was a good chance that he wasn't going to feel good by race-time. He even said throughout the race that he didn't feel that great, but I think when he got to the last few kilometers and when he saw that finish line, his adrenaline just kicked in he was able to pull it out.
I think that fact that we now have one win under our belts as a team and knowing that Tom is probably going to be riding even better, we're going to be a lot more relaxed and confident come Monday. I think with myself, Max van Heeswijk and Stefano Zanini, we have one of the strongest sprinting teams in the field, and we could even pull out another one on Monday. Who knows? That's our strategy.
The fact that I'm here has really sunk in, and I know that the next 10 days are the ones that are really important for me.
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ALSO SEE
Armstrong places 38th in first stage; second overall
Stage Two provides excitement, surprises
Rodriguez Diary No. 1
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