Sergeant: "We can race without pressure"

By Brecht Decaluwé in Marcinelle

After a disappointing Spring Classics campaign, Davitamon-Lotto's team manager Marc Sergeant looked very happy when Cyclingnews spoke with him at the finish line after stage two at the Giro d'Italia: "After Liège-Bastogne-Liège, I said we needed to turn that dark, empty looking page... it just wasn't good enough for us.

"This is a new page, and it's already written full; now, we can race without pressure," said Sergeant, the Belgian referring to a hat-trick of wins the team scored at the Tour de Romandie and the stage victory of Gert Steegmans at the Four Days of Dunkirk.

"Of course, we were unhappy and I think that's logical; the sponsor and everybody that was involved with the team complained. Now that we've taken all these recent victories, there will be calm. You know, recently a guy from L'Equipe said that a French team would've been happy with our results - but since we're in Belgium and rivalling Quick.Step, the situation is completely different."

So what did Marc Sergeant think about today's victory of McEwen? "It was really nice what Robbie did today - I think the others weren't even in the photo finish!

"Tomorrow will be slightly more difficult since the finish is uphill on the Citadel of Namur; but you never know with Robbie... once he's in the winning mood, he's hard to stop. I expect that Quick.Step and Liquigas will do the work to get Bettini and Di Luca into a good position for an uphill sprint."