“It was a perfect day,” Bissegger said from the hot seat in Lelystad. “The course suited me perfectly. Because of the heavy head wind you really had to go flat out in the first part. It was almost impossible to ride 50km per hour, you really had to push all the way.”
Bissegger was the only rider to manage that 50km average speed on the first half of the course, before turning back and enjoying what had become a fierce tail wind back to the finish. “In the second half I was enjoying it and suffering at the same time. Thanks to the tail wind we reached speeds of over 60km/h. I didn’t expect the gap to be that big at the finish. My power metre didn’t work, so I didn’t know how I was doing.”
Bissegger’s win comes just days after a training accident, which nearly caused the Swiss rider to miss the Benelux Tour. “On Friday I was hit by a car in training,” he revealed. “I had to go to hospital for a scan, but fortunately it was just a sore wrist. On the bike it still hurts a bit, but I’m happy I still managed to win despite the injury.”
