After a strong showing at the Giro, Philip Deignan is back in action at the Tour de Suisse tomorrow.
By Gerard Cromwell
After a strong performance at the Giro d’Italia, where he featured in numerous breakaways and finished third on the mountain top finish to Rifugio Panarotto on stage 18, Philip Deignan is back in action for Team Sky at the nine-day Tour de Suisse tomorrow.
“I took a few days off and did a few easy rides,” said Deignan of his post Giro recovery routine.
“Like I was saying in my Giro diary, I had a list of things I sort of wanted to do, just normal day to day things... going to the beach, going to a barbecue with friends and stuff to relax a little bit.
"The weather has been pretty nice so it’s been good to try and recover with some easy spins too.”
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Deignan will line up in Switzerland alongside Giro teammate Ben Swift, recent Tour of California winner Bradley Wiggins, Luke Rowe, Christian Knees, Joe Dombrowski, Pete Kennaugh and the returning Sergio Henao when the race begins with a 9.4km time trial in Bellinzona tomorrow.
The Donegal man will however be looking towards the end of the race where he hopes to be able to help leaders Wiggins and Henao on the tough Hors Category summit finishes to Verbier and Saas-Fe.
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“It’s always hard to tell how you’re going until you start racing. I still feel pretty tired to be honest but I definitely haven’t overdone it this week.
“It might take a couple of days for my body to get going again.
“I’ll just be trying to help the guys, especially in the mountains.
“It’ll be a change from the Giro in that it will be more about helping the leader but it’s what I came to this team to do and I’m looking forward to it.
“The last few days I’ve done a couple of longer rides and then did a motor pacing session Thursday just to get a bit of race rhythm back into the legs.
“I’ve done Tour de Suisse after the Giro in 2008 and 2011 so I know it’s better to go in underdone than overdone, so I’ve been making sure I didn’t overdo it more than anything.
Afterwards, Deignan will probably come home to ride his ‘least favourite race of the year’, the national road race championships, depending on his recovery from Switzerland.
“At the moment yeah, I’m doing them, but the Tour de Suisse is a pretty hard race so I’ll see how I’m feeling before I say a definite ‘yes’ but, at the moment, I’m riding them.”
