Belkin stronger than ever: 1-2-3-4!
Tour of Hainan, stage 7, Wuzhishan-Dongfang, km 217.2
Belkin stronger than ever: 1-2-3-4!
Belkin Pro Cycling has gone beyond expectation as they didn’t only claim their seventh stage win in a row at the 2013 Tour of Hainan but also captured the first four places in Dongfang with Theo Bos, Moreno Hofland, Lars Boom and Tom Leezer preceding the rest of the field.
“It wasn’t really our goal but we expected the last corner to being further from the finish than it actually was”, Bos explained. “I lost the wheels of my lead out men in the last corner and I thought it was no problem but I saw the finish line very close, so it became a very short sprint. In this particular finale, it was difficult for the riders in sixth or seventh position to follow the first guys taking the curve. I was lucky that I didn’t have to break but behind me, they had to. The road leading to the finish line was also a little bit downhill. That’s why the first four riders at the corner stayed at the first four places.”
The big question mark over stage 7 was whether or not Bos would survive the first category climb located in the first ten kilometers of the race after leaving Wuzhishan. Up the hill, there were three races in one: the CCC Polsat team put the hammer down four kilometers before the top to install Mateusz Taciak in the lead of the King of the Mountains competition, super domestique Marc Goos set the tempo at the front of the peloton to prevent any danger for Hofland as the race leader, Bos and a few others battled at the back in order to limit the damage and keep a chance to come across.
“I got dropped from the second group and I found myself in a grupetto at the end of the downhill”, Bos described. “If a team didn’t want me back and decided to pull, I’d never have come back, but eventually a breakaway went and no team chased. That was my chance to make it back to the peloton who slowed down.” Ukraine’s Serhiy Langkoti stayed away from km 50 to km 200, with up to five minutes lead and the late reinforcement of Samir Jabrayilov (Synergy Baku) and Wu Shengjun (Qinghai Tanyoude) but it came down to a bunch sprint as the race approached to coastal city of Dangfong on the west coast of the sunny Hainan island.
“We don’t let any stage away”, Bos commented. “Maybe in such a situation, it doesn’t look nice that we don’t give any other team a chance to win but it’s also a professional sport. We train hard to win races. We take the Tour of Hainan very seriously. Today with 35 victories for the whole 2013 season, Belkin becomes the second most successful team in the world by the numbers behind Omega Pharma-Quick Step (53). We’re making history for ourselves and for the Tour of Hainan. In our country, the Netherlands, the race is in the news every day. To get a better ranking for the team in terms of victories boosts our motivation for next year. It’s nice to finish the season this way but today we also learned about our lead out. I don’t know if it has happened before that this team [formerly known as Rabobank] has won so much, we may not be the best team in the world but we’re definitely on the right track in all aspects of racing: in the classics, overall classifications in Grand Tours and sprinting as well.”
Hofland looks very close to his first big win in a hors-category stage race. “Tomorrow is the last stage with a few hills”, noted the 21 year old who has led the race since day 1. “Looking at the profile, I should be able to survive in the first group. I’ll give everything and it should be ok.”
Stage 7 Results – Tour of Hainan
1. Theo Bos (BEL) 5:13:57
2. Lars Boom (BEL)
3. Moreno Hofland (BEL)
4. Thomas Leezer (BEL)
5. Yuriy Metlushenko (UKR)
6. Thomas Palmer (DPC)
General classification
1. Moreno Hofland (BEL) 25:48:16
2. Frédéric Amorison (CRE) +57
3. Thomas Leezer (BEL) +1:04
4. Fabian Schnaidt (CSS) +1:08
5. Jos van Emden (BEL)
6. Kevin Peeters (CRE) +1:09
LEADERBOARD going into stage eight, the classification leaders are:
Yellow Jersey (Individual GC): Moreno Hofland (BEL)
Green Jersey (Points Classification): Moreno Hofland (BEL)
Polka Dot Jersey: Mateusz Taciak (CCC)
Blue Jersey (Best Asian Rider Classification): Liu Yilin (HEN)
Teams GC: Belkin Pro Cycling Team
Sprint 1
1. Jos van Emden (BEL)
2. Thomas Leezer (BEL)
3. Lars Boom (BEL)
Sprint 2
1. Serely Langkoti (UKR)
2. Justin Jules (LPM)
3. Fabian Schnaidt (CSS)
Sprint 3
1. Serely Langkoti (UKR)
2. Oleksandr Polivoda (ARH)
3. Zhao Kang (YDL)
KOM (Cat.1, Elevation 757m)
1. Mateusz Taciak (CCC)
2. Nikolay Mihaylov (CCC)
3. Darren Lapthorne (DPC)
