July 25, 2012 (London, UK) – Friends and families waiting at St. Pancras Station for the EuroStar train from Brussels couldn’t figure out what the big deal was. Who were all these people with cameras and notebooks? An hour before Ryder Hesjedal’s train was to arrive in London, media started to gather at the Arrivals door.
A subtle positioning of cameras, journalists, accredited and non-accredited media started to take place. When the 6’2″ Giro d’Italia champion finally emerged there was a Canadian media tidal wave. The Indonesian Minister of Energy, who was also on the train with staff at the station waiting to gather him up, was most definitely upstaged.
Hesjedal recovered quickly from his Tour-ending crash and says and he’s been doing one day events – readying for the Olympics. “With what I’ve been doing you stay optimistic that you’ll be prepared under the circumstances, so we’ll see,” says Hesjedal, who added he didn’t lose any conditioning.
“I know what the powermetre says,” he quipped about his power wattage. But no matter how fit, he realizes he is Canada’s lone entry in the men’s road race as Canada did not earn enough UCI points in the 2011 season to qualify a larger team. He says the Brits want to take the show at the road race.
“I feel good. I know the roads,” adds Hesjedal about the course in Surrey that includes several laps of Box Hill – a steep climb – before it returns on 40km of flats to the finish at Buckingham Palace. Prior to arriving in London Hesjedal went from Belgium where he was “training [his] ass off” to Paris to be with his team at the end of the Tour de France. He says it was the one-day events mainly in Belgium that got his form back to what is necessary for the Games.
In his usual understated manner, Hesjedal tried to warn those who don’t know cycling tactics that he is “…a one man show. I’ll be flexible and I will take my chances,” he added. Still, he predicted, “We’ll definitely be taking home some medals in cycling…”- a tip to the talent his Canadian teammates.