Eamonn Deane writes Daniel Lloyd (Garmin-Cervelo) has endured a rough ride at the start of his eighth season as a continental professional.
Lloyd had trained well over the winter and was looking forward to a good spring campaign. However, crashing on consecutive days in his first race, The Tour of Qatar, dented his morale and forced him off the bike for a few days.
He was back in the saddle for the eight day Paris-Nice race and rode himself into good form, earning selection for the one day classic, The Tour of Flanders. Unfortunately, bad luck struck again and Lloyd crashed on a corner and was forced to retire from the race.
Crashing is part of professional bike racing, so there will be no complaints from Daniel. Bad luck dogged the team at the Circuit de la Sarthe in France when thieves stole all of the days racing kit as it waited to be laundered.
This weekend he is in Holland for the Amstel Gold race and will then be taking a short break, his wife, Lorraine is expecting there second son in Early May and Lloyd has been given paternity leave.
The team want Dan to ride the whole of the Ardennes week,Amstel Gold, Fleche Wallone & Liege-Bastogne-Liege, “La Doyenne”, the oldest of the spring classics, first ran in 1892.
He has fully recovered from all his early season crashes and is in good shape. After Dan’s teammate, Johan Van Summerens victory in Paris-Roubaix’ the whole team is on a high and the squad are hungry for more success in the Ardennes races.
Links for Eamonn:
