Wim Stroetinga wins the 2011 Royal Smilde Olympia’s Tour - Cycling News
Koga Cycling team's Wim Stroetinga showed his brilliant performance and won the second stage of 2011 Royal Smilde Olympia’s Tour, on May 18. The race started in Noordwijk and ended at Olst.
The Dutch professional racing cyclist took total of 4 hours, 17 minutes and 54 seconds to cover the distance of 202.4 kilometres.
Stroetinga said, “It is long since I won a real race, so the feeling is great. Especially, when you consider how easy it was.”
Koga Cycling team kept the race under control in the final kilometres of the race and the 26-year-old, Wim crossed the line comfortably ahead of Yoeri Havik of Cycling Team de Rijke.
Luke Rowe from Great Britain stood in third place, with the same timing, as of Yoeri. The first stage winner, Jetse Bol tried his best to put up a good performance, but he failed and grabbed seventh place.
The stage was characterised by a huge amount of wind on the flat road. The group of three riders, Tom Dumoulin, Jetse Bol and Michael Hepburn made first break. Tom Dumoulin got three points and won the first sprint.
After a few kilometres, three cyclists were caught by the peloton. In the second sprint, Bart Van Haaren increased his speed and managed to cross two riders, Sjoerd Kouwenhoven and Pim de Beer.
In the final sprint of the race, Raymond Kreder of the Nationale Baan team took the lead ahead of the two cyclists.
After winning the stage, Wim Stroetinga said, “I know I'm the fastest, but you still have to get over the line first, yesterday I came late and so today I went with 300 metres to go. I have to brake hard through the last corner and then I had flown into
a gap.”
In 2008, Wim Stroetinga stood at third place in the Los Angeles race, while at the National Championship held at track Madison in 2007, he secured third place again.
Jetse Bol of the Rabobank team retained his overall classification with the timing of 7 hours, 46 minutes and 3 seconds. Christoph Pfingsten was placed in second place with a difference of nine seconds, behind Jetse. The stage winner, Wim Stroetinga finished
third with ten seconds adrift.
The next stage will start in Ulft and end in Gendringen. All the riders will cover the distance of 162.7 kilometres in the competition.
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