Jurgen Roelandts aiming the Paris-Tours
After securing an overall victory at the Tour de Picardie-Wallonie 2012, Jurgen Roelandts of Team Lotto Belisol has noted that he is pretty much in contention for winning the Paris-Tours or will at least finish at the podium.
The cyclist rode brilliantly throughout the four-day race and occupied the top podium position after finishing the race in a total time of 15 hours, 31 minutes and 48 seconds along with a stage 1 victory at the race.
Juan Antonio Flecha Giannoni of Team Sky Procycling finished 17 seconds behind at the second position with Guillaume Van Keirsbulck of Team Omega Pharma-QuickStep achieved the second and the third positions respectively.
Maarten Wynants of Team Rabobank and Nacer Bouhanni of Team FDJ-Big Mat occupied the fourth and the fifth positions in the respective order.
The Belgian also managed to occupy the top podium position at the sprint classifications with a total number of 80 points to his credit.
Nacer Bouhanni, Marcel Kittel, Aidis Kruopis and Michael Van Staeyen achieved the second, third, fourth and fifth positions with 70, 50, 40 and 30 points respectively.
The Belgian started his professional season at the Santos Tour Down Under and was unluckily caught up in a crash during the first stage of the race which ended his hopes for the Australian race.
However, the cyclist never let the crash from becoming the highlight of his season as he has helped the team leader Andre Greipel in various top performances in the current season.
Despite helping his leader for several victories in the season, Roelandts was also given his own chances and he made full use of them, winning the stage 4 of the Tour de Luxembourg along with a third overall finish at the Ster ZLM Toer 2012.
"After my serious fall in the Tour Down Under I out for four months and I was cross about missing the classics. It was a very difficult period," Roelandts told
Het Laatste Nieuws.
"Now I end the season in the best conditions. The contrast with the beginning of 2012 could not be greater”.
“Next Sunday I want to stand on podium in Paris-Tours. I won the competition already in the promises [U-23]”.
“At the world championships, I have indeed shown that my legs are capable of racing more than 250km," he said.
Only time will tell, if the Belgian manages to fulfil his dream by securing the podium, minimum at the remaining Paris-Tour races of the season.
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