"I'm a little disappointed but definitely not discouraged," said Discovery team manager Johan Bruyneel after the final stage of the Vuelta al Pais Vasco, with their best-placed rider Tom Danielson placing 14th in the short but sharp 9.3 kilometre time trial and their best GC rider José Luis Rubiera finishing 17th overall. "You always have to realistic, but when you are at the race, you always want to do better."
The pragmatic DS added riders like Rubiera, Danielson, Jose Azevedo, Paolo Savoldelli and Benjamin Noval, who all rode the Spanish ProTour stage race, have their main season objectives further down the line, and with the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France still some distance away, most of the Discovery Channel crew at the race are still working their way into top form.
"They definitely cannot be super at this time of the season, it's just too early for them. They are all on a good level but not their top level, and you can see that as there always seems to be about 15 or so guys in front of them," he said.
Bruyneel also mentioned that while individual accomplishments within the team were nothing to write home about - apart from new Ukrainian recruit Volodymyr Bileka's third place overall at the Circuit de la Sarthe - the team's overall performances at Pais Vasco and the two other ProTour stage races so far this season, Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico, as well as the Ruta del Sol, Tour of the Algarve, Semana Catalana have been very sound. In the latter three events, the Discovery Channel team twice finished first and second once, while in the ProTour races, the team placed fourth twice before finishing as the third-best team at the Vuelta al Pais Vasco.
"The guys for the Giro and the Tour have goals that are further way. But, of course, you always want to be at the front, always. We have put all of our hopes right now on our Classics team and those are the guys who have to perform," said Bruyneel, who should be more than satisfied after George Hincapie's best-ever result in yesterday's Paris-Roubaix, where he finished second behind Tom Boonen.
