Grand Prix Oetingen, Lucie Jounier 4th
It was a day of 4 places for our teams, with this nice performance also obtained by Lucie Jounier in the sprint on the Grand Prix Oetingen.
Photo Getty Images
On the line
“We had done the reconnaissance of the GP Oetingen circuit before the competition, because even if it is an event that we had ridden last year, we had to remember some passages. We expected it to be tough both physically and mentally. We had prepared ourselves for this. The first few rounds the whole team suffered a bit, and I personally found it difficult to get going. I told myself that it was going to take a long time, but I was patient, as were my team-mates who did a great job for me. And in the end, I opted for an energy saving mode by staying in the wheels so as not to suffer too much, and when this was done at the approach of the last 3-4 laps we had to be ideally placed especially in the approach of the cobbled sectors and their crossings. That’s where the race was made, and then in the Mont. I took the wheel of the other sprinters towards the finish and I finished 4th, which is better than my 6th place in the Netherlands, and we are getting closer and closer to the podium. The objective is to get there in the next races”.
The debrief
“The selection was made by elimination with the sequence of cobbled sectors and the mountains, and we must underline the good collective work of all the riders of the Arkéa Pro Cycling Team. They have been working hard to be constantly placed in these strategic parts of the race. When I saw that the breakaways hadn’t managed to make much of an advance, we decided to play the Lucie card in the sprint. We had four girls left in the peloton: Morgane, Typhaine, Pauline, and they put themselves at Lucie’s service in the last lap, who went on to take a fine fourth place. This is a great performance, especially since Wiebes won today, the best sprinter in the girls’ category, in front of another reference, Consonni. We are getting closer to the podium, and it is a great individual and collective performance for the team, and it bodes well for our riders in the coming races”.