Pierrick Fédrigo is hoping for better luck in his second season at FDJ after
illness ruined most of his 2011 campaign. The Frenchman was stricken by Lyme
disease and forced to miss the Tour de France, but he returned to action with a
series of solid performances at the end of the summer.
“From the
beginning of the season, I had noticed some changes in my state of health,”
Fédrigo told Sud Ouest. “I was tired, I had some muscular pain. In persisting in
racing, I asked more of my body than it could manage. I went beyond my limits.
It was only afterwards that I discovered that it was due to my illness, but it
was too late.”
Though Fédrigo’s symptoms began early in the spring, he
was not diagnosed with Lyme disease until July, when he was sidelined from the
Tour de France. The bacterial infection is transferred by ticks and Fédrigo
initially believed he picked it up while hunting near his home in Marmande in
south-western France.
“I’ve also got some animals at home, and I’m
someone who loves to be in nature, so it’s not absolutely certain that it
happened while hunting,” he said. “It’s a very hard illness to diagnose and it
goes in cycles, it comes and goes. At the height of flu season last year, I
thought that’s what it was.”
The symptoms of the illness made it
difficult for Fédrigo to train and keep his morale up during the spring, and he
struggled at the Ardennes classics. “I had a lot of fatigue and no motivation,”
he recalled. “When I came back from a race, I wouldn’t touch my bike for four
days. When I went back training, I’d ride for two hours and I’d come back
feeling like I’d done six. I was wiped out.
“I was at rock bottom. At one
point, I fell into depression. I didn’t want to see anyone anymore.”
When
he was forced to miss out on the Tour de France, Fédrigo was somewhat relieved
to be formally diagnosed with Lyme disease. After following a course of
antibiotics, he was able to build towards the end of the season.
“Even at
a 100 percent, the Tour is hard, but in my state, it would have been suicidal,”
he said. “It was during the third week of July that the illness was diagnosed,
so I had had it for six months. The day when I knew exactly what I had, I was
reassured to know that there was a real reason for my state.”
Fédrigo
came back to racing at the Polynormande at the beginning of August, and enjoyed
a return to form in the closing weeks of the season. “I felt straight away that
it was going better. I could get in breaks and attack,” he said. “But to get
from there to winning was a little too soon, I was missing race
rhythm.”
Even so, he came close at the Grand Prix de Montréal in
September, when he finished in second place behind Rui Costa, and ahead of
Philippe Gilbert. “I was relieved, and of course that boosted my morale ahead of
next season.”
Fédrigo will spend six weeks off the bike this winter
before beginning training in early December. His 2012 campaign will get underway
in February at Étoile de Bessèges, and the triple Tour de France stage winner
hopes to return to La Grande Boucle in July.
“I’ve ridden eight of them
and my aim is to do ten,” he said. “I’m 33 years old, and as long as I keep
taking pleasure from it, I’ll keep riding.”
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