Fabian Cancellara may skip the Tour de France in 2013 in order to concentrate on the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. The Swiss rider, who has said he will honour his contract and ride for RadioShack-Nissan again in the coming year, looked back at the 2012 season and forward to the future.
“I want to be a rider again next season. Back to basics,” he told Het Nieuwsblad. “In the first place I am going for Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. The Tour... I think I could even skip it.”
It was once his dream to win the Tour de France, but no more. “I don't want to be like Wiggins and Jurgen Van den Broeck and sacrifice everything for the Tour. I want a different life. I am not only a rider but also a family man,” he said.
“I even think that I could skip the next Tour, especially now that here is no prologue. What do I have to prove? Perhaps it is more interesting to take a break then to prepare for the second part of the season.”
Cancellara's 2012 season started out promisingly, as he won Strade Bianche and was second in Milan-San Remo. But it all came to a screeching halt in the Tour of Flanders, which he had hoped to win for the second time. A crash over a bidon laying on the road gave him a fractured collarbone, which kept him out of action for nearly two months.
He took the Swiss national time trial title and won the Tour de France prologue, wearing the leader's jersey for a week. After finishing only third in the first time trial, he abandoned the race to be home for the birth of his second child.
Cancellara returned to action at the Olympics, where he hoped he would end up on the podium. But again, a crash did him in. The crash near the end of the road race “was my own fault. I went too fast through the curve.”
“It is a strange fact: if I am sure of myself, I hit the asphalt. Like while I'm in the flow of beckoning success, I'm just not alert enough or ride sloppily in the group. In London I was really convince that I was Olympic champion.”