I.Kosehvoy (Lampre)
M.Hasnaoui (SkyDive)
A.Kamyshev (Astana)

MTN-Qhubeka
Bardiani
LottoNL-Jumbo
Tinkoff-Saxo
Movistar

The group of three formed themselves after 20 kilometers of brutal racing, with attacks after attacks. Our man Balck was involved there too for the KOM points, but it was too hard. The trio went away when everybody thought that MTN wouldn´t let away anyone. They achieved a miximum advantage of three minutes, which went down when Adam Hansen attacked with 75 km to go.

He could reach the breakaway with 45 km to go and an advantage of 1"40 on the peloton.

We still had the mountains classification in mind, so we brought Tschopp in front of the peloton on each KoM-point.

The peloton did a hard chase since Hansen went, so they catched the group early. 6 MTN-Qhubeka men launched the sprint for Bos in yellow bot on the final bumps we had Bardiani, LottoNL, MTN and Leopard with a train for their men.

At least we did well with the pre-sprint, Maaskant had a great day, but Mathieu went a little late of Petrs backwheel. Meanwhile three riders without train finished first. Guardini took the stage for Astana in front of Sabatini and Bennati.

With this result Guardini took the leadership in the GC, Bos is in second with the same time.

Mathieu really hoped for a top five today, so now he is a little disappointed being unlucky the second time in a row. But he is really young and will get stronger every sprint. Our sprinting train looked strong today, especially Martijn with all his experience and Petr are doing fantstic jobs there.
Tomorrow Johann will attack the polka-dot jersey early, whil Laurent will wait to the big climb. It will be the deciding stage of this years Vuelta a Mallorca.

Gianluca Brambilla (Etixx)
Peter Velits (BMC)
Jack Bauer (Cannondale)
Maxim Belkov (Katusha)
Johann Tschopp (Leopard)
Lars Ytting Bak (Lotto-Belisol)
David Belda (Burgos)
Ian Boswell (Sky)

Astana
Sky
Movistar



max.advatage: 6"07 with 78km to go
remaining advantage at the Puig Major: 3"28 with 32 to go
remaining break: Velits, Brambilla, Tschopp

Plaza (30km)

Hernandez, Valls, Visconti, Herrada (28km)

Vuillermoz, Montaguti, Acevedo, van der Poel (27km)


We go into racing with 18km to go. Brambilla and Velits fought for the KOM points until the top of the Puig Major, when suppenly Tschopp reacted to their attacks. He finished first at the Puig, just when Plaza, Hernandez and Herrada reached the trio.

In the meantime their were loads of attacks in the peloton, while our main man Didier really struggled to climb, Mathieu surprised us by holding on to some big names, especially when Landa put the hammer down for Astana to lead the peloton. Yellow jersey Guardini was dropped a long time ago by this moment.
The six man were a minute upfront on the top of puig, and the splitted groups behind partly found themselves together. The leading group had to keep the pace high, so that they dropped Velits and Brambilla on the descent with five to go. Tschopp could hang on to them, but had not enough left to fight for the win.

Plaza took it very close on the line, finishing in front of Hernandez and Herrada, who looked the strongest before. Velits and Brambilla finished half a minute down on the four; the other riders got clearly distanced. Van der Poel came in on place 12, finishing the same time with LL Sanchez and Dombrowski, which gave him a very surprising white jersey.

Tschopp missed the polka-dot jersey by only six points, but on tomorrows stage he can fight either for the mountains jersey or for a podium place...

Howes (Cannondale)
Dupont (AG2R)
Capecchi (Movistar)
Benoot (Lotto)
Barbero (Caja Rural)
Rodriguez (Androni)
Didier (Leopard)
Silin (Katousha)
Mancebo (SkyDive)
Sepulveda (Bretagne)
Zandio (Sky)

Cult Energy
Lampre
Movistar

max.advantage: 6"17 with 82km to go
remaining group with 60 km to go:

Silin, Capecchi, Benoot, Zandio
2 minutes with 20 km to go

Pirazzi(Bardiani) with 58km to go


Haas & Hivert(Bretagne) with 25 km to go


Wegmann(Cult) & Moreno(Movistar) with 14 km to go

For us Tschopp had a really bad day, so we realized that we just slow things down to secure Johanns Tschopp. After the hard day yesterday he struggeled from the beginning on, so we had to change the van der Poel plan into a secure the GC-plan. Tschopp managed to reach the finish with the GC boys, but he wouldn´t have taken another 10km.
While the four man upfront battled for the victory the peloton took it easy, not lifting up their legs but chasing not on full speed.
So Zandio came first on the final road after an attack with five to go, but Capecchi closed him down. The italian had to pay for this effort and was chanceless, when young man Tiesj Benoot raised his hands to celebrate the victory.

There were no major changes in the GC, as the group was not dangerous for the leaders. But somehow Herrada lost time, and we could celebrate an unexpected podium place in the GC.

I wanted to say a bad stage for us, because I honestly didn´t notice what happened to Herrada. But like this it´s an amazing result, for the stage and the whole tour. A 3rd Place for Tschopp as well as the white jersey vor van der Poel are really amazing compared to the ambitions we had before this race.

We, especially Vakoc, had a great time there

Gatis fighting in yellow



Lieuwe pulling on his leaders jersey

Omloop Het Nieuwesblad
Gent - Gent 193,8 km
28.2. cobbled classic 1.HC

When we started our day in Gent there was not the strongest line-up in the history of the Omloop. But we have many ambicious continental teams with their captains her as well as some second-strongest cobblers from World-Tour Teams.
BMC tried to control the race for Daniel Oss right from the beginning. Not bullied by that, Smukulis attacked a couple of times to create a group.



Finally a group of four got together, containing Riblon, de Clercq, Smukulis and Jens Wallays (Topsport).



They gained their lead to a maximum of 6"30 with 110km to go, but over the first cobbled section the peloton really started to chase hard early. On the front were a lot of teams, especially the likes of FDJ, Tinkoff, Europcar, Astana and Etixx.



When the advantage came down a little, firstly Maes and then Grivko decided to have a go for a long one (80km). But as they reached the breakaway, no one had an interest in helping these two. With only two guys riding, they had no chance to survive. Especially when with 56 km to go Sky and FDJ put their man together to form a group of five, bringing the peloton in huge difficulties.



Now the pace was extraordinary high, but as the SkyFDJ group reached the breakaway they got cought by the peloton, in which only 40 men were left. With SMukulis returning to the peloton from the break, we had now five riders in there.



But the likes of Vandewalle, Burghardt and Smukulis were really tired, so Wallays and Westra were on their own when big attacks came in. Our couple couldn´t follow the strongest one, by Gaudin, Eisel and Offredo. So we put Wallays uptop of the peloton to chase together with a Cofidis guy. In the meantime there were successful attacks by Keisse, Roulston and Offredo to break away after the last cobbled section.
With 8 km to go Westra tried the jump himself, racing quickly towards the finishing line in Gent. He managed to reach the group containing Gaudin, Roulston and Keisse with 3 to go, and immediately he attacked the trio. They could not
respond to this big attack, but neither could Westra reach the fight for the win.
This fight was won by Ladagnous over Eisel; Ladagnous just had that little extra punch on the last 50 meters of the race.



Westra reached the line third, seing all the riders he overtook behind him. But he was too tired to celebrate his podium place, just batteling himself over the line.



The trio just managed to hold on in front of a fast bigger group. Our four man in the 30-riders-peloton couldn´t really sprint for minor places, they were just too tired from the hard day out.

And we´re continuing to do so! It was good to have someone in the breakaway to control the mid-race attacks. We had a good team with 5 riders in there when only 45 were left in the peloton. Sadly all but Wallays and Westra were nearly dead, so Wallays had to chase the attacking riders all on his own. Westra seemed to be very strong, reaching many riders after his attack and overtaking them, but in the end there were two stronger guys here. But we can be really satisfied with a podium place on the first cobbled classic and maybe our highlight cobbled classic.
Hopefully Burghardt can find his form until "the revenge for Het Nieuwesblad", so that we can try something with a more offensive strategy.

Classic Sud Ardeche
28.2. bumpy 198,0 km 1.1

Breakaway (Delaplace, Vicioso, Balck) with a maximum advantage of 6"28 with 110km to go



After the break got caught early a group of nine rider went away, including the winner Luis Leon Sanchez



as well as the four riders sprinting for minor places, in which group Mathieu was the strongest and got us P2.