John Degenkolb starts his sixth Tour de France today and despite taking eleven Grand Tour stages in his career to-date, hasn’t actually won a stage of the Tour.
Having endured a difficult spring where he suffered with bronchitis and crashed at Paris-Roubaix, the Trek-Segafredo rider who recently finished second at the German Road Race Championships feels that his training has gone well and that he is going into the race with a lot of confidence. The German was speaking at Friday’s Trek-Segafredo press conference ahead of the Tour de France
John Degenkolb: “My condition right now is really good, I think. I had a very good time after Switzerland, doing some very hard training in Austria, which was very beautiful. I had the chance to do a lot of climbs there and that will pay off for sure. The weekend of the nationals was also good to me. It was not a super hard race, but in the end, it was a chaotic and tough sprint, just like the sprints will be here, at the Tour de France. I made a good second place there, so I go into the Tour with a lot of confidence.
“We come here with a very homogeneous team, that makes us stronger as a unit. We have very good riders on this team and I have full trust that we can make a great result with Bauke in Paris. We will have to work together as a team and in the end, we will be there.
“At the Tour you cannot choose your stages, you have to look at it day by day. We are going to give the full 100% every day and I think that’s the most important. That’s the way we have to go into this Tour: to try every day to perform at that 100% and we will see how we end up. For us the dream scenario would be that we can win one or maybe even two or three stages and bring Bauke in a good GC position to Paris, that’s the big goal for the next three weeks.”
