Theo Bos wins final stage as Simon Gerrans takes overall lead of Tour of Denmark 2011
Rabobank team’s Theo Bos won the bunch sprint of the sixth and final stage of Tour of Denmark 2011 on Sunday, August 7. Simon Gerrans secured overall leader’s yellow jersey.
The race started in Hillerod and ended in Frederiksberg. The 27-year-old Dutch road cyclist was fastest in the stage and took the total of 3 hours, 27 minutes and 51 seconds to cover the distance of 162.4 kilometres.
A Rabobank team rider was committed to Matti Breschel for the overall lead but the plan failed because the Danish cyclist was two minutes down due to suffering from sickness.
In the final kilometres Gerrans showed a tremendous effort for defending his leader’s jersey while Bennati tried to take it. The trio was keen to fight with the stage victory while Bennati faced problems and failed to take it.
Sportif directeur Jan Boven said, "It wasn't good Saturday night and it looked like he was developing a fever, it doesn't clear everything up, as for that his time trial was really bad. But it explains it a bit so that I can better understand his declarations
made yesterday."
With few kilometres remaining, Bennati was in good form in intermediate sprint but the three cyclists including Andre Steensen (Saxo Bank-Sungard), Lasse Bochman (Glud & Marstrand) and Kristian Sobota (Christina Watches) made the first breakaway and were
later joined by Jack Bobridge and Asbjorn Kragh Anderson.
All of them were caught by the peloton before the first sprint and Gerrans managed to gain a lead of nine seconds ahead of Bennati. After few kilometres to go, another group of seven cyclists managed to gain an advantage of two minutes.
Bennati took a lead but failed to hold his pace in the final sprint and grabbed 11th place ahead of Pelucchi. Theo Bos crossed the finish line ahead of the other cyclists.
Sacha Modolo was runner-up and Manuel Belletti finished third with the same timing of the Dutch.
Sports Director Marcus Ljungqvist said, "It's a really good result, a very nice win for Simon and for the team. Like always without the help of the team it is difficult to pull something off, so it was great to see."
Simon Gerrans took overall standing with the timing of 19 hours, 12 minutes and 1 second. Bennati was in second spot with 9 seconds and Morkov was in third with 29 seconds behind the Australian.
Michael Reihs of Christina Watches – Onfone took the overall title of Mountain standing with 58 points. Alessandro Bazzana (Team Type 1 – Sanofi) was in second with 44 points ahead of Pederson. Jerome Cousin (Europcar) took the title of Best Young Rider
ahead of Waeytens.
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