Tour of Luxembourg: Roelandts grabs solo victory while Fuglsang secures overall win

Going clear in an early breakaway and then attacking towards the end of the stage, Jurgen Roelandts won the fourth and final stage of the Skoda Tour de Luxembourg. Ben Swift and Davide Appolonio of Team Sky sprinted to second and third place, although the initial results were later recalculated.

Because the hilly local circuit was very wet, the final overall classification of the Skoda Tour de Luxembourg was determined at the first passage of the finish for safety reasons. The stage continued after that with seven local 6.8 kilometers laps. Radioshack, with race leader Jakob Fuglsang, brought the gap down to 25 seconds at the new finish point to secure the overall, and then stopped chasing.

Fuglsang took the final overall classification ahead of Wout Poels and Fränk Schleck, beating the Vacansoleil DCM rider and his own Radioshack-Nissan team-mate by two and five seconds respectively.

"I think the organization made the right decision by ending the GC battle at that point,” he said afterwards. “There was a real risk of crashes and everyone was nervous about staying upright. Our team kept control of the chase behind Jurgen Roelandts, who was alone at the front.”

“Luxembourg is my second home so to win the national tour of Luxembourg is important to the team but also to me,” said Fuglsang, “especially after the difficult spring I had with bad luck and injuries. It’s nice to make a comeback like this. It was the right decision for me to not start the Giro d’Italia and give my knee more time to heal. Now I have this victory and I am very, very happy. The team was riding very strongly and I have to thank them.”

The peloton started the final stage to the capital city in rainy conditions. After four kilometers four riders broke away. Jurgen Roelandts (Lotto-Belisol), Damien Gaudin (Europcar), Jimmy Casper (AG2r-la Mondiale) and Tom Stamsnijder (Argos-Shimano) took their chance but Radioshack-Nissan-Trek controlled their lead at three minutes.

Roelandts then chose the right moment and attacked, extending his lead to over two minutes. The Belgian had already finished third in the second stage in what was his first race since he sustained a broken vertebrae in the Tour Down Under. The unfortunate rider was later diagnosed with a blocked artery which kept him out of racing untill the Tour of Belgium eleven days ago.

"I felt bad the first day," he said after the finish. "After that it went better with a third place in the second stage. By then I knew the legs were good. I could keep quiet in the grupetto yesterday and today I took my chance. I knew this break could hold until the finish, especially because I was at over twelve minutes in the overall. It was a tough stage but it was my weather. I know how to descend in the rain and that's where I took time."

It was Roelandts' first victory since the 2008 Circuit Franco-Belge.

Apart from taking first and third overall in its home race, Radioshack-Nissan also won the team's classification.