Hannes Genze wins final stage as Robert Mennen takes overall lead in Trans Zollernalb 2011
Topeak-Ergon team’s Hannes Genze showed his powerful skills in the third and final stage of Trans Zollernalb 2011 on Sunday, September 25 while Robert Mennen took the overall leader’s jersey.
The race started in Albstadt and ended in Hechingen. The German road cyclists took a total of 2 hours, 26 minutes and 49 seconds to cover the distance of 78 kilometres.
Alexandre Moos (BMC Mountainbike Racing Team), Daniel Federspiel (Silmax Cannondale Racing Team) and Ruben Scheire (MTB Rudi Bike Inn Herentals België) were in sixth, seventh and eighth place respectively.
In the final kilometres, Topeak-Ergon’s implemented a prefect strategy to take the overall standing while Karl Platt was worried about his leader’s jersey but failed to retain his lead and grabbed third place with a difference of 4 minutes and 37 seconds.
Platt said, “In the decisive moment, I was alone, without teammates because Thomas (Dietsch) struggled, and Tim (Böhme) had a puncture. I couldn't catch the attacks alone."
After few kilometres to go, Lakata was the first cyclists who launched an attack first but he was caught by Platt. Mennena and Platt worked hard to take a lead. Genze jumped the gap to Mennen and both of them worked together to gain a lead of five minutes
as the peloton did not chase him.
Genze took the final stage victory ahead of stage winner Mennen with a difference of 3 seconds. Alban Lakata finished fourth with 5 minutes down to Genze.
Mennen told cyclingnews.com, "It went perfectly for us. I had good legs but Hannes was also working hard for us. It's a super success for me and for team. We had a great race with a perfect organization."
Robert took the two intermediate sprints and also the overall standing with a time of 7 hours, 1 minute and 47 seconds.
Despite a broken finger, Ann-Kathrin Hellstern (BQ-Cycling-Team/RIG Freiburg) showed her tremendous abilities and took her third consecutive stage victory and overall leader’s jersey with a time of 8 hours, 35 minutes and 8 seconds. Gabi Stanger (Team Centurion)
was runner-up with 11 minutes and 24 seconds ahead of Ivonne Kraft and Katharina Alberti.
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