Vacansoleil-DCM cycling team’s Joost Van Leijen begins second stage of Tour de Wallonie 2011
Vacansoleil-DCM Pro cycling team’s Joost Van Leijen won the second stage of Tour de Wallonie 2011 on Sunday, July 24. Greg Van Avermaet took the overall leader’s jersey.
The race started in Wanze and ended in Houffalize. The 27-year-old Dutch cyclists took the total of 4 hours, 57 minutes to cover the distance of 194.4 kilometres.
Previously, Leijen took the Tour of the Munsterland in 2010 and also took the fourth stage of Tour de Hokkaido in 2008.
The race leader Greg Van Avermaet of BMC Racing was runner-up with same timing of Leijen. Ben Hermans of RadioShack was in third place with the difference of 4 seconds ahead of Edwig Cammaerts and Thomas Degand.
In the beginning of stage, the group of eight riders made their first breakaway ahead of the first climb.
Although, seven kilometres to go, the four cyclists included Van Avermaet, Gregory Henderson (Sky Pro Cycling), Mirko Selvaggi (Vacansoleil) and Rudy Rouet (Wallonie-Bruxelles). All of them managed to gain a lead of four minutes and got away.
However, in the final climb Van Avermaet launched an attack and took the overall lead with the timing of 8 hours, 41 minutes and 56 seconds. Jost Van Leijen was runner-up with same timing of Belgium while Ben Hermans RadioShack was in third place with difference
of 10 seconds.
After taking the overall leader jersey, Van Avermaet told the media, "I tried to win the stage by going early, the team did very good work to put me in the front and Ballan did a great job. We had a gap, but there was still 500 meters to go."
Van Avermaet further added, "Tomorrow's final climb is really steep, I hope that I can take some seconds there and have a good GC at this race."
Greg Henderson took the overall sprint classification with 10 points ahead of Sebastien Delfosse and Pieter Serry. Mirko Selvaggi won the mountain classification title with 32 points ahead of Ben Hermans and Rudy Rouet.
The next stage will start in Sombreville and ended in Perwez. All the cyclists will cover the distance of 224.4 kilometres.
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