Robbie McEwen takes final stage and celebrates overall lead in Tour de Wallonie-Picarde 2011
RadioShack team’s Robbie McEwen was the fastest of all, after beating Andrea Guardini in the last kilometres to take the fourth and final stage of Tour de Wallonie-Picarde 2011 on Sunday, October 2. He was awarded with the overall leader’s yellow jersey.
Final stage was a 175.4 kilometre run that started in Mons and finished in Tournai. The 39-year-old Australian cyclists took a total 3 hours, 52 minutes and 18 seconds to reach his destination. The Australian controlled the situation of the stage and was
able to jump ahead of Andrea Guardini of Farnese Vini-Neri Sottoli.
Sébastien Chavanel of Europcar finished third with the same timing of the Sprinter ahead of second stage winner Christopher Sutton. A group of eleven cyclists made a breakaway lead and got clear early in the stage as all of them gained maximum points in
the intermediate sprint. Evgeny Shalunov took the first sprint.
Sky Procycling team’s Michael Rogers was in good form and got away from the bunch to take first place in the second sprint. However, in the final lap all chasing cyclists went back together and Laurens De Vreese secured the third sprint ahead of Mathew Hayman.
Sutton told the media, “All the team were going so strong but we just ran out of the men after Kjell Carlström went home because his wife had a baby.”
In the final kilometres, team Sky showed their powerful skills and got clear but McEwen crossed the finish line first ahead of the other cyclists to take an impressive victory.
McEwen hoped that he would be able to win the next Paris-Tours and said, “This was not expected today. This was a hard stage with seven climbs of the Col de la Croix de Jubaru. Despite the heat I felt good today and actually felt better and better as the
stage went on.”
Robbie put in an excellent performance and secured the overall lead with a time of 14 hours, 43 minutes and 44 seconds, ahead of Tom Veelers who was five seconds down to the Australian. Sutton was in third place ahead of Ronan Van Zandbeek.
Tags: