Fabio Jakobsen: “I win because I started the sprint at the right time”
Jakobsen kept Caleb Ewan and Tim Merlier behind him, among others. The Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl sprinter therefore seems more than ready for what is to come, including the Tour de France.
“Winning is never easy, although it sometimes seems that way,” said Jakobsen. “I actually started again in the Tour of Hungary. I finished a training camp in Spain with part of the team in preparation for the Tour de France. The legs were good there, but training is never the same as a race. It was good to stimulate the body again today and to test the legs.”
The last kilometer was very chaotic. “There was that chicane in the last 2 kilometers,” said Jakobsen. “It ran from left to right. Of course the speed goes completely off there, but you have to be in the first fifteen there. Yves Lampaert then brought me to the front. And suddenly Florian Sénéchal also came to beep. He immediately started the sprint I myself started about 200 meters from the finish I know what I had left I felt at one point Caleb Ewan would come on the left but I still had the power to make it with a wheel length lead.”
There had to be a sprint with the wind in the lead. No sinecure. “In such sprints, timing is very important. With tailwind the speed is higher. A sprint usually takes between 10 and 15 seconds. With a headwind it is about 200 meters. Because I started the sprint before Ewan, I win”, Jacobsen concluded.