[the_ad id="5357"]
[ad_1]
The thought of making his Grand Tour debut at the Giro d’Italia in the fragrant month of May must have felt like a fever dream when Charlie Quarterman found himself climbing into the back of an Argentinian ambulance a little over three months ago.
Quarterman and his new Corratec-Selle Italia teammates had been en route to the Vuelta a San Juan when word filtered through that the squad had secured a surprise wildcard invitation to the corsa rosa. The Briton scarcely had time to wrap his head around the idea, however, before a bout of heatstroke forced him to abandon the race on the second day.
“When you hear about the wildcard, you start thinking about the Giro directly, even though it’s months away,” Quarterman told Cyclingnews. “From that moment onwards, I felt a little bit more pressure, and that’s what made it hurt more when I was lying in the back of the ambulance.”
Quarterman’s frustration wasn’t helped by the fact that he had to wait in San Juan for the rest of the week until he could board the charter flight back to Buenos Aires with the rest of the peloton. While his new companions were getting their seasons underway and putting in their claims for Giro berths, the 24-year-old had to pass the time with some solo training rides.
“That rubbed a little bit of salt into the wound,” he confessed. “It hurt a lot to miss the race, but it gave me a little more hunger and it made me see that I really needed to work.”
By the time Quarterman got his season underway in earnest at O Gran Camiño a month later, thoughts at Corratec had turned more firmly towards that pressing appointment in May.
Team management took the rather old-school approach of dangling Giro participation as a carrot before their riders through the Spring, creating considerable internal competition for places. Quarterman’s ticket to the Giro wasn’t stamped until ten days before the Grande Partenza.
“It was part of the team’s plan to motivate us by making us all work for it, and fight between ourselves,” Quarterman said. “I felt more confident at the start of the season, but when the time trials I did didn’t go to plan, the confidence actually went down.
“It was only in the last couple of French races that I managed to show my legs. I got in the break a couple of times there, and I was able to prepare for this race with a little more certainty.”
The long road back
In the grand scheme of things, Quarterman’s Argentinian episode was but a mere detour in the context of the tortuous journey that…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CyclingNews RSS Feed…
[ad_2]