Eric Breukink 3-Day

Guten Tag to all. First of all to my mother trying to reach me on my mobile, it doesn’t work here in Holland for some reason? Got your SMS but no joy to reply?? The race is hard here, the organisation is terrible. They give us a plan of the distance of the race stages and then they add 15 kms to it just like??? that, so yesterday was planned for 200kms and 30kms was added to the race the same today!! Even the hills on the profile were all wrong. The distance of the hill was short of the length and it screws up things a little bit. The broom wagon today had 25 riders in front of it and it just drove past them and left them to plot their own way to the finish??? Pretty scary when they have taken down the arrows directing you to the finish and you still have 100 kms to the finish???????? Any way Fakta are 2 men less going into tomorrows stage and the chances of a stage win are slim. Magnus Backstead got me to put a 55 ring on his bike tonight which is a good sign as he loves to time trial. He told me tonight, when he was a junior on the national team he had 182.5 mm cranks with 58*53 rings on and a 11 on the back. When he rode the worlds, they only finished 4th. the Germans won. It was 100kms, his heart rate was at 187 average for the whole 100kms (his max is 197). he came into the stadium track finish and he said he saw stars and collapsed and had to be saved with oxygen. The team had 2 discs on their bikes and at the end of the race the wheels were so badly damaged from them riding so close to each other in the lineout that they had to trash them>>>>>>>> now that’s fast. They were touching 100kms per hour on the downhills in a tunnel??? Swedes tall and fast….. Tomorrow is a individual TT 16kms. I have 3 sets of aero bars for 8 riders, 2 rear discs wheels and no TT bikes… Well I’m glad we are not winning overall? Have a good weekend wherever you race B

Day 2: What great weather we are having here in Holland, 11 degrees everyday, sun, not a cloud in the sky. Yesterday was no different for the 18kms TT. Good conditions and a pretty difficult circuit with a bit of pave thrown in. The best performance from Fakta was by Magnus Backstead who placed 8th it was a good performance. Overall the team were bad there were a lot of moves during the race and only 2 guys Michael Reihs and Thomas Gronqvuist were able to get into them, then when the real moves happened they all missed it. Most of the guys here were admittingly injured before and have had very little racing but Erik Dekker has done 1 race before this one he has had knee problems since the start of the year?? He used his experience to his benefit and came good for the TT .Now he has 100 UCI points to his credit. One of the riders on our team a new signing Bjarke Nielsen who was with CSC last year has no bike from the team as yet??He was told one week before the race to arrive with his LOOK bike. I also think someone forgot to tell him to number one clean it and number two, maintain it. I’ll try to keep the moaning to a minimum!! He arrives the day before the race at 6pm, I have been there for 2 days putting the cotton buds through the links of the chains so to speak? This clown arrives and says “Hi my name is Bjarke Nielsen! How are you? blah blah my bike doesn’t seem to be working the lever is jammed???” Oooook let me look at it? The first thing that I see is the chain has stretched so much that it looks like a BMX chain, the back derailleur is bent in, the front mech is jammed, it basically doesn’t move and to top it all off the adjuster for the cable which is situated top left hand side of the downtube is broken and the threaded piece is left in the frame??? The right one is the same. I basically wanted to take the bike and dump it in the recycle bin beside the van,but I decided to do the job to the best of my ability so I hung it up in the truck and put the “USE ONLY IN CASE OF EXTREME EMERGENCY STICKER ON IT”. To make a long story short he didnt ride this bike I put him on another guys bike which was way to long on the top for him, reason I gave it to him was if it stretched out his body a bit maybe it could do the same to his brain??Riders are like little kids they arrive with bikes 6pm after you have put in 12 hours preparing that day and ‘oh by the way can you sort this out for me im of for me massage????’ So basically if they arrive on a dirty bike they ride on it the next day and if its broken and its your bike take it to a bike shop and the manager has told us its ok with him, I mean I cant understand guys coming to work after all he gets paid to ride, and basically their not prepared, so I take out of this is I am not interested in this race and I don’t care,well bjarke me old flower guess what i care,but I don’t care about your LOOK bike so enjoy this new found stretched out bike for a bit until your new bike arrives. Anyway the next race is in Belgium Nokara-Nokara the I collect some bikes from the mech who did paris nice and I go to France for the GP Cholet which is on Sunday. I hope the weather is good where ever you are because its great here. Laters B