The weekend of the Paris-Roubaix was not particulary profitable for Team LAMPRE-MERIDA (61st place for Oliveira and 65th place for Pozzato who also hadtwo punctures), but Chun Kai Feng gave pride to the blue-fuchsia-green team.
LAMPRE-MERIDA made history at the Hell of the North: Feng was the first Taiwanese rider to be at the start of the race from Compiegne. This was not merely a statistic data since the interest from the media and the fans was really great. Lots of fans asked Feng to sign an autograph.
The exposure for the rider, the team and its sponsors was very high and in Asia the topic was central. From Thursday to Sunday, two Taiwanese reporters, with the support of Zhao Haoyang (LAMPRE-MERIDA's Asia media manager) followed all the actions of Feng and the media replies were amazing.
Feng had an article dedicated to him in the first page of the Chinese newspaper United Daily News whose circulation is 1.650.000 copies. Moreover, the CNA (Central News Agency: the state news agency of the Republic of China) made a reportage.
"This has been an outstanding experience for me and I'm very honoured to have received the opportunity to race the Paris-Roubaix," Feng explained. I learnt that in this race the most important things are experience, form and a little bit of luck. I'm not in top shape because of a contusion to my knee that I suffered in a crash in the Tour of Taiwan, I approached the early cobbled sectors in the rear part of the bunch and so I had to stop or to run in the fields in order to overtake the riders who had crashed.
"I could not achieve the goal of reaching Roubaix, but I'd like to take part in the race again in the future in a better form in order to try do obtain a better result. I learnt a lot from my team mates and the sport directors of the team."
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