Martin Elmiger crashes in the Paris-Nice prologue

IAM Cycling met with a painful entry to the Paris-Nice prologue.

Missing that slight edge of luck, Martin Elmiger found himself on the ground in only the second turn of the very technical prologue. The rider from Zug explained how he met with his misadventure:

“I entered this stage with an expectation of performing well since the course suited my qualities. But I crashed almost immediately after starting when I took the second corner very tight and nicked a block of concrete placed on the side of the road. I’m a little cut up on the side, but nothing so severe that it will prevent me from continuing. I lost maybe 20 seconds in the whole incident, without which I expect I could have placed in the top 10.”

Happily, IAM Cycling has not lost everything due to this mishap, in the course of a day that featured the surprise victory of Damien Gaudin (Europcar). Directeur sportif, Kjell Carlström regretted Elmiger’s misfortune, but preferred to look to the future possibilities for the team:

“Haussler also crashed during his reconnaissance of the course, so he was hardly at his best during the race either. Luckily, all of our best hopes for the general classification came through the day unscathed and in good position. Larsson, Löfkvist and Tschopp all managed to limit the damages since they are none of them specialists at short, fast, technical prologues.”