Planet Finishes With Lead Group at Route Adelie de Vitre

31 March 2017

Race: Route Adelie de Vitre

Start/Finish: Vitre, France

Distance: 197.8km

Vitre, France — The French Cup national series held its third race of the 2017 season in Vitre on Friday, celebrating in the cycling-mad region of Bretagne with a circuit race through the medium-sized northwestern city.

Team Novo Nordisk kicked off six laps of 21km in a 140-rider peloton, and held back from the early breakaway in order to remain fresh for the eight finishing laps of just under 9km in front of nearly 40,000 fans. The peloton caught the early leaders just at the moment the race entered the shorter laps, and from there a flurry of attacks in the final 60km kept the final group fast and competitive, with no riders gaining more than 30 seconds.

French rider Laurent Pichon beat his countryman Cyril Gautier in the sprint, and Team Novo Nordisk’s Charles Planet finished together with them in the final sprint and distanced by just five seconds.

Team Novo Nordisk Sport Director Lionel Marie:

“We came with two objectives today – first to give the riders with less racing so far this year the goal of finishing and building their race speed. Second, for the riders who have been racing more, we came to protect Martijn and Charles for the sprint. On count one we have more work ahead of us, because the season has begun and the level now is quite high. For the rest it’s good to see how Charles took his race fitness home and now returns quite sharp.”

Team Novo Nordisk Charles Planet

“I was really going full gas the whole race, but I really enjoyed it. I train every day for races like this, and even though it was full gas today, and I worked really hard, I had a lot of pleasure on the bike. On the finishing laps there was never really a breakaway, just a lot of attacks that kept being brought back. It was a really tough race, and I did my best for the sprint at the end.”

The world’s first all-diabetes pro cycling team will race again on Sunday in France at the 16th La Roue Tourangelle Région Centre Val de Loire – Trophée Harmonie Mutuelle.