Tom Veelers takes third stage as race gets new overall leader in Tour de Wallonie-Picarde 2011
Skil-Shimano team’s Tom Veelers take his first stage victory of this season after putting in a tremendous performance in the third stage of the Tour de Wallonie-Picarde on Saturday, October 1. He also took the overall leader’s yellow jersey from overnight
leader’s Robbie McEwen in Ichtegem.
The 27-year-old Dutch professional cyclist spent 3 hours, 21 minutes and 17 seconds to travel the 153.3 kilometres and easily beat the second stage winner’s Christopher Sutton of Sky Procycling.
With 47 kilometres to go, the group of five cyclists made their first breakaway lead including, Alessandro Ballan (BMC Racing), William Clarke (Leopard Trek), Ronan Van Zandbeek (Skil-Shimano), Sébastien Delfosse (Landbouwkrediet) and Diego Caccia (Farnese
Vini-Neri-Sottoli).
All of them easily established a lead of 3 minutes and 32 seconds while a number of attacks were not handed much of a lead. However, Mathew Hayman increased his pace and took the first intermediate sprint.
A large group of chasers worked hard to move clear and Leopard Trek’s rider David Vigano managed to bridge across and catch the nine-man chasers collectively. They were gaining an advantage of four minutes over the peloton. In the final 13 kilometres, the
gap was down to 2 minutes and 30 seconds while McEwen took a bonus in the second sprint.
However, Veelers launched an initial attack and crossed the finish line ahead of the other cyclists to take his first victory.
Sébastien Chavanel (Team Europcar) was in third place with the same timing of the sprinter ahead of Robbie Mcewen.
Previously, Tom took third place in the prologue stage of Tour of Qatar 2010 and he also grabbed ninth stage of Tour of Qinghai Lake in 2009.
Tom also took the overall standing with a time of 10 hours, 51 minutes and 31 seconds while Sutton was in runner-up spot. McEwen finished third with a difference of 5 seconds ahead of Ronan Van Zandbeek.
The final stage will run in Mons and finish in Tournai as all the cyclists will cover the distance of 175.4 kilometres. It will be interesting to see who takes the leader’s jersey.
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