Greg Van Avermaet secures overall lead in final stage of Tour de Wallonie 2011 - Cycling News
BMC racing team’s Greg Van Avermaet won the fifth stage and also secured overall leader’s yellow jersey in Tour of Wallonie 2011 on Wednesday, July 27.
The race started in Charleroi and ended in Thuin. The 26-year-old Belgian cyclists took the total of 3 hours, 21 minutes and 53 seconds to cover the distance of 163.3 kilometres.
After winning the stage, Van Avermaet told the media, "The finish suited me well and it was great work by my teammates, every day they were there to help me. This is definitely a highlight of my career."
The overall leader of third stage Joost Van Leijen of Vacansoleil-DCM Pro Cycling was runner-up and Ben Hermans of RadioShack was in third place with the same timing of the Belgian.
Sergey Lagutin (Vacansoleil-DCM Pro Cycling) was in good form and tried to catch the leading cyclists but failed and grabbed 15th place with the difference of 6 seconds ahead of Nikolay Trusov (Katusha Team).
A group of five cyclists made their first breakaway, including Christophe Premont (Wallonie Bruxelles - Credit Agricole), Romain Lemarchand (AG2R La Mondiale), Olivier Kaisen (Omega Pharma-Lotto), Jesse Sergent (RadioShack) and Matthieu Ladagnous (FDJ).
All of them managed to gain a lead of a few seconds while Matthieu Ladagnous showed a good effort and took first sprint. After 92 kilometres, Pieter Jacobs and Andy Cappelle joined together but Matthieu again took the second and third intermediate sprint.
The two cyclists Taylor Phinney and Alexander Kristoff led the bunch. In the last ten kilometres, BMC Racing rider Alessandro Ballan tried to take a lead but failed and Avermaet took charge ahead of the other cyclists.
Assistant Director of BMC Racing team Rik Verbrugghe said, "So to see him do well in Belgium, Austria and now here is great. He is on good form and we'll see if he can hold it through to San Sebastian on Saturday."
Recently, Avermaet took the sixth stage and overall points standing of Tour of Austria and he also took the overall second place in Tour of Belgium.
Van Avermaet took the overall standing with the timing of 20 hours, 51 minutes and 51 seconds while Leijen was in second place with 4 seconds behind the Belgian.
Ben Hermans finished third with the difference of 22 seconds ahead of Michal Golas and Edwig Cammaerts.
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