Tired Haussler inspired by teammate Pooley

Cervélo's Australian-German Tour de France stage winner, Heinrich Haussler, approached today's Grand Prix Ouest-France as just one of many options for his team; a team that has shown itself all year to be able to do well in all kinds of scenarios.

"Yeah," he said, "we've got a good team, with Thor [Hushovd] and also with [Xavier] Florencio and with Simon [Gerrans]. We've got guys who can attack and go off with groups at the end, or we can also try and keep it together for the sprint. We'll see what happens in the race and then we'll make our tactic."

The weekend double of Saturday's World Cup race for women and Sunday's ProTour race for men gave the two parts of the Cervélo TestTeam a rare chance to be in the same part of the world - and to race on the same course - as each other. Yesterday's emphatic victory by Emma Pooley could surely not fail to inspire and motivate the men's team to perform today.

"Definitely," Haussler said. "She rode really strong yesterday - I heard - for sure we're going to go for the double, try and do it in the men's race today."

It's been a long season for Haussler, whose season started on February 1st with the Tour of Qatar. So much so that he will be hanging up his wheels for the year a little earlier than many. "I'm going home for a couple of days," he said, "then go to the Tour of Missouri. After that I'm finished for the season."

Instead of the Vuelta a España, World Championships or autumn classics, Haussler will be laying the foundations of next year's spring campaign, in the hope of bettering at least one of his two second places at Milano-Sanremo and the Ronde van Vlaanderen.

"I need a rest," said Haussler. "My head's tired, I'm going to have a good rest so I can go and train hard in the winter and get ready for the Classics again. I'm going to do pretty much what I did last year, so I need to go pretty much fresh into the winter. It's been so long since January, since Qatar."