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Pssst! The latest insider news: No break for Ralf Grabsch after the Tour de France.
03/08/2024
Dear Team MILRAM fans,
right after the Tour de France the German Tour-riders started at several circuit races after the Tour. On Monday it was a little stressy for all of us, because we got into a big traffic jam on our way back from Paris to Germany. But these races are real fun. When we arrived in Ratingen where the first circuit race took place I first thought ‚why now?’. But the races are really nice and after a few kilometers the legs started to get better and then it was fun.
The circuit races are a possibility for us to show ourselves to the peole, especially after the Tour de France. All the visitors followed the Tour de France on TV and they all still got the Tour-feeling. So it’s great for us to present ourselves to them again. The atmosphere is always singular. There are up to 20.000 people. The course is always a circuit of about a kilometer. For the people standing on the roadside that’s really different than a usual race from A to B over about 200 kilometers. Here we pass them by really often, and we write a lot of autographs before and after the race. Something like that you find only in cycling. The audience is always very enthusiastic. Here you can see that people are still standing behind us, despite of all the headlines. And this is what motivates us. Right after the Tour I did four criteria, and at the end of August I’ll be starting at two races in my former home, in Magdeburg and Dessau. That’s something very special to me again.
Thinking back to the Tour de France I can say that – except from all that trappings – it was a great tour for me personally. Especially the prologue and the start of the first stage in London were an exceptional experience with all the sights in London’s city and all the people standing at the streets in rows of ten. That was the highlight par excellence. The Tour is the greatest experience anyway. People in the towns and villages who are all preparing someting like paintings on their houses or on the streets, that’s something very special. The first half of the Tour I worked for the Team and especially for Erik, and I think I did my work ideally. Additionally I tried to get into escape groups. I did, but I was unfortunate with the constellations, so that we were always caught up again soon. This is what I missed in the end: to show myself the one or other time. But I got over the Alps and Pyrenees pretty well. I always found a group in which I arrived without having to get to my limits. This is a good sign for being in a condition in which you can get through a three weeks’ tour on a high level.
At the weekend I’m going to start at the Sparkassen-Giro in Bochum. Then there are the Deutschland-Tour and the Cyclassics, and after that I’ll allow myself some rest after all these intense highlights.
See you soon,
Ralf
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