G
G&GR News Bot
Guest
Marcel Kittel
Whilst most riders are taking time off after the Tour de France and the Olympics, the world tour kicked off in Benelux last night with some big names taking to the start list.
The seven stage tour of the European Customs Union is a primarily sprint based tour with no real mountain stages on offer for any climbers. In the past three years Norwegian Edvald Boasson Hagen has dominated the event, twice taking the overall General Classifications and claiming three points’ victories.
For those watching the tour for the first time, the General Classifications leader wears a WHITE jersey, the Points Leader a RED jersey and the Young Rider wears GREEN.
For this year’s tour some big names have backed up from the Olympics to compete, but the main story is the return of Alberto Contador from a doping ban. The Saxo Bank rider will return from his ban that ruled him out of this year’s Tour de France and Olympics, and he will be hoping to put in a strong showing.
In the General Classification, riders to look out for include Contador, Sylvain Chavanel, David Millar and Jack Bauer of Garmin-Sharp, Taylor Phinny of BMC Racing, Sebastian Langeveld of Orica-GreenEdge and Jonathan Castroviejo of Movistar. But with the stages being primarily flat, I expect this jersey will be highly unpredictable and may end up with one of the sprinters.
In the sprints category I expect Alessandro Petacchi of Lampre, Mark Renshaw of Rabobank and Tom Boonen of Omega Pharma to be high in the classifications.
For a full list of the starters: http://www.cyclingfever.com/editie.html?_ap=startlijst&editie_idd=MjI5MTc=
Overnight the first stage crossed through Zeeland along the coast of the North Sea. Whilst the generally flat 203.9km stage was contested on open roads, the strong ocean winds would be one that would trouble the riders. The early parts of the stage saw two riders escape to a lead of 8’32” with 90km to go, until a large number of teams took control and worked together to pull them back, eventuating in the two riders (Scheirlinck and Urtasun) conceding capture as they. As the peloton started the finishing circuit of 55km, the sprinters took control as the race become very controlled with the change of direction inland preventing any affects of coastal winds.
With 21km to go young Belgian rider Tim Declerg managed to escape but was quickly brought back by the peloton. From there Team Sky and Omega took charge as many dropped riders fought to stay in touch. BMC Racing decided to move ahead into the final 10KM as numerous other teams jostled for the main pace setting positions. Rabo Bank came back into race control in the final 2km as the peloton was disrupted by a large crash halfway back in the field. From there on in Argos-Shimano, the Dutch Professional Continental team, took the remaining group into the final kilometre, with their German sprinter Marcel Kittel holding of RadioShacks Nizzolo to take the stage win.
Tonight’s stage is a short team time trial of 18.9Km with the start and finishing in the Limburg city of Sittard. This trial will be seen as a preview of the World Cup Team Trial to be held in September on the same roads. Whilst not identical to the World Cup course, which is around 3 times as long in distance, teams will have to take technical points through three villages where the straight roads in-between will see maximum speeds.
As the Eneco tour is usually a tour decided by mere seconds, this may be seen as a decisive stage in deciding the overall classifications.
For Australians there are 8 riders competing for different teams.
Christopher Sutton (SKY), Luke Roberts and David Tanner (Saxo-Bank), Graeme Brown and Mark Renshaw (Rabo-Bank), Heinrich Haussler (Garmin),and, Leigh Howard and Luke Durbridge (GreenEdge).
For those interested in catching a bit of the tour in-between Olympic events, I do believe it is on Eurosport from about 9:30pm, but I cannot confirm if it is live or not.
The post Eneco Tour of Benelux appeared first on Green and Gold Cycling.
Continue reading...