Greipel's Turkish adventure comes to an end

Andre Greipel's adventures in Turkey involved not only multiple stage wins and the points jersey, but also a big crash and an exceptionally long trip home. He summed it all up as "a very nice race".

The HTC-Columbia rider won five of the race's eight stages, and his teammate Tejay van Garderen took second place overall. "I only wanted to win one stage," he told Cyclingnews. "I didn't know how my form would be after my racing pause."

On the negative side of the race, he and most of his teammates were involved in a crash near the end of the seventh stage, Fortunately, no one was injured. "Our sprint train with Bert Grabsch went into the tight curve one kilometre before the finish line just a bit too fast," Greipel said. "But that's part of our sport."

But it was after the race that the real adventure began, a procedure he called "pretty stressful". It involved a flight from Antalya to Istanbul, then back to Antalya. Another flight to Salzburg, Austria, a rental car across the border to Nürnberg, Germany, and from there a train to Cologne – the speedy man needed 36 hours to get home again.

Greipel, 27, will now have enough time to rest up from the journey before his next race, Rund um den Finanzplatz on May 1 in Frankfurt.