Adam Hansen of T-Mobile Team took on the Clásica San Sebastián as his first ProTour single day race, and could have picked an easier one. "It's 225 kilometres short, has nine climbs, big roads and today was a very, very hot day. Very hot just in case you didn't pick it up in the sentence before," he wrote on his website, adamhansen.com.
He wanted to get in a break, along with teammates Marcus Burghardt and Roger Hammond. Burghardt was the lucky one in this race, getting into a 22-man strong group which got away. But he was unable to stay with it to the end. And by then, things weren't going so well for Hansen, either.
"On all of the hills I was feeling good. Always at the front. As the race went on and with a little problem in my stomach I didn't really eat enough, maybe I was too busy pouring water on myself to keep my body temp[erature] down; damn it was hot! Real hot. I don't know what it was," the Australian said. "But it wasn't right. I had a few problems on the second to last hill, but it wasn't my legs, it was my breathing [and] my stomach."
"So I had to finish two groups back from the leaders. Oh well, but I'm pretty happy," he concluded. "It's a big race, my first Pro Tour and my second race back from injury! So I ain't going to complain!"
And at that he finished best on his team, ending up 74th, 10'34" down.
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