Tom Boonen grabbed his fourth overall victory at the Tour of Qatar
Tom Boonen of Team Omega-Pharma Quick Step bagged his fourth overall victory at the Tour of Qatar 2012. His previous wins at the race were back in 2006, 2008 and 2009.
He started the final stage of the race with a lead of more than 30 seconds over Tyler Farrar, Juan Antonio Flecha and Gert Steegmans.
Boonen’s 15th place finish at the final stage of the race was good enough to earn him the overall win at one of his favourite events.
The Belgian clearly stole the show with two stage wins and two classifications in his bag. He walked home with stage 1, stage 4, silver and the yellow jersey wins during the race.
The 31-year-old was surrounded by media, as he was all smiles after having an ideal start to his 2012 season.
Tom stated, “All four wins here have been hard. If you win four times it’s 24 days of hard labour. But this was nice because there were a lot of good riders here. Two days ago the hard stage we had was really like a classic (stage 4)”.
“Normally after a hard stage you can break it up a bit in the following ones but this year it has been a man to man fight. We controlled the last two stages as a team so I am happy,” he concluded.
Team Omega Pharma-Quick Step cyclist leads the overall classification with Tyler Farrar and Antonio Flecha at the second and third positions, respectively.
Gert Steegmans, Tom Veelers and Mark Cavendish claimed the fourth, fifth and sixth positions during the final day in Qatar.
Tom earned useful 45 points after the race and dominated the point’s classifications which earned him the silver jersey.
Mark Cavendish finished 15 points behind to secure the second position while Tyler Farrar, Mark Renshaw and Daniel Oss achieved the next three spots, with 27, 22 and 22 points each.
Team Omega Pharma-Quick Step leads the team’s classifications with Team Sky Procycling, Team Garmin-Cervelo and Team Project 1t4i achieving the next three spots.
Arnaud Demare of Team FDJ-BigMat was the surprise of the day. The first year professional won the sixth stage of the race to open his winning account at the highest level of cycling.
He finished the 120 kilometre race in the fastest time of 2 hours, 20 minutes and 44 seconds. Denis Galimzyanov and Mark Renshaw finished at the second and third spots.
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