Success for Katusha team, McEwen misses out on sixth win
Russian sprinter Denis Galimzyanov proved quickest at the end of today’s Paris-Brussels semi-Classic, launching his sprint at the right moment and beating the Belarusian Yauheni Hutarovich (FDJ) and Frenchman Anthony Ravard (Ag2r La Mondiale) to the line.
“Today everything was perfect in quite a hard course,” he said. “We had to race for 220 kms, most of them with strong headwind. Fortunately, the team worked really well: my teammates always imposed the pace we wanted to on the race.”
Although the win is a very big one in its own right, part of his motivation is to prepare for a big target in two week’s time. “Let’s enjoy this important success, which gives us strong motivation for the next competitions, but from tomorrow on we’ll be back to hard training for the World Championships,” he promised.
Five time champion Robbie McEwen (RadioShack) was riding the race for the final time and was hoping to clock up another win. However the Australian missed out, explaining after the race that luck was not on his side. “Things went pear shaped at 2k to go, I nearly crashed,” he said on his Twitter feed. “I lost 40 places and tried to come back in last km. Ran out of rd to get amongst the prizes.” McEwen crossed the line twelfth.
He’ll continue to race next season but only do half the year as a rider with the new GreenEdge team, then switching to an advisory role with the squad.
Today’s break formed early on when Jonathan Hivert (Saur-Sojasun), Matthieu Sprick (Skil-Shimano), Jurgen van Goolen (Verandas Willems-Accent), Alessandro De Marchi (Androni Giocattoli), Diego Caccia (Farnese Vini–Neri-Sottoli) and Daniele Ratto ( Geox-TMC Transformers) joined forces.
The six riders did what they could to fend off the chase behind but were reeled in approximately thirty kilometres from the line. A group of twenty riders then slipped clear, including Andre Greipel (Omega Pharma Lotto), but things came back together inside the final ten kilometres. Yoann Offredo (FDJ) remained out front, though, and was chased hard by Markus Burghardt (BMC Racing Team), who was hauled back before he could get across. Offredo was finally caught inside four kilometres to go.
From that point on the sprinters’ teams kept a tighter control on things and over 50 riders hurtled towards the finish together.
The Katusha team led things into the final kilometre for Galimzyanov, but were then overhauled by the Saxo Bank SunGard team, which was working hard to set up Lucas Sebastian Haedo. They appeared to go too early, though, and Haedo was swamped inside the final 200 metres, fading to 21st.
Directeur sportif Dan Frost said that they put in a good effort, but couldn’t quite finish it off. “I think the boys did a tremendous job in the finale where David (Tanner) was ready and vigilant and tried to go in several attempts. Closing in on the finish line, Luke (Roberts) and Baden (Cooke) supported Sebastian (Haedo) to the finish line and left him in a perfect position, but he simply lacked that tiny bit of strength needed in order to last all the way.”
Galimzyanov had no such problems, jumping later than Haedo and beating Hutarovich, Ravard, Stefan Van Dijk (Veranda’s Willems – Accent) and Takashi Miyazawa ( Farnese Vini – Neri Sottoli) to the line. He added the race to the stage victories he took earlier this year in the Tour of Luxembourg and the Three Days of De Panne.