Edvald Boasson Hagen wins first stage of 2011 Bayern-Rundfahrt: Cycling News
Edvald Boasson of Sky Pro-cycling team showed his tremendous performance and won the mass sprint of the first stage of 2011 Bayern-Rundfahrt on Wednesday, May 25.
The race is started in Pfarrkirchen and ended at Freystadt. The 24-year-old, Boasson took a total of 5 hours, 20 minutes and 26 seconds to cover a distance of 223.2 kilometres.
Andre Schulze of CCC Polsat Polkowice was runner-up with the same timing of Boasson. Heinrich Haussler finished third, while Lloyd Mondory was in fourth place.
After winning the stage, Boasson was very happy with his performance and he told the media, “I haven’t had much luck this season so the victory allowed me to get a lot of frustration out after my recent setbacks. Today everything worked perfectly and the
team were brilliant, I just finished off the hard work they had done for me.”
The group of five riders made their first break, including Jaroslav Marycz of Saxo Bank-SunGard, Markus Eichler of NSP, Sander Armee of Topsport Vlaanderen, Maxime Bouet of AG2R and Fabian Wegmann of Leopard Trek.
When the race entered in the finishing circuit, all of them managed to build a lead on the rolling course of the race. After few kilometres, the five cyclists built a lead of 8 minutes and 15 seconds over peloton in the half-way of the race. But after few
kilometres, the gap started reduced.
In the last 8 kilometres, Eichler had fallen back, but the other four cyclists showed good effort in order to put pressure on peloton. In the last 3 kilometres, Edvald made his speed and cross the finish line ahead of the other cyclists.
Sky Pro-cycling team's Sports Director, Servais Knaven, said, “It was a great team performance. We have a really strong squad here and everyone is determined to work for one another and put on a good show.”
Previously, Edvald grabbed overall second place in Tour of Oman and also won National Time Trial Championship in 2010.
Edvald also took lead in overall classification with timing of 5 hours, 20 minutes and 16 seconds. Andre Schulze was runner-up with 4 seconds behind Boasson. Maxime Bouet finished third with the difference of 5 seconds.
The next will start in Freystadt and end in Bad Gögging. All the riders will cover a distance of 206.5 kilometres.
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