Its no great surprise that André Greipel (OmegaPharma-Lotto) won the first stage of the Driedaagse De Panne-Koksijde between Middelkerke and Zottegem, but the German sprinter did it the hard way. Greipel was part of a long breakaway, that reduced to just four riders in the hilly closing 25km; the group cut it fine though, finishing with the peloton snapping at it heels.
Greipel had no trouble beating the other three riders, with Lieuwe Westra (Vacansoleil-DCM) taking second ahead of a close finsish between Dmitriy Muravyev (RadioShack) and Vladimir Gusev (Katusha).
Romain Feillu (Vacansoleil-DCM) led the peloton home a hair’s breadth behind them.
“I had good legs today and I thought I would try to go in the breakaway,” said Greipel afterwards. “I’m happy that I could finish it off; Muravyev, Westra and Gusev are really good time trial riders, but I said it was for the GC and they rode.”
After a fast first hour of racing a group of eight riders finally made it clear of the peloton. The group consisted of Jens Debusschere (OmegaPharma-Lotto), Laurens De Vreese and Jelle Wallays (both Topsport Vlaanderen-Mercator), Bert De Backer (Skil-Shimano), Sébastien Turgot (Europcar), Mickael Delage (FDJ), Aleksejs Saramotins (Cofidis) and Pim Ligthart (Rabobank); they pulled out a maximum lead of 3 minutes, but as they crossed the finish line to start the two, tough 44km loops it had been cut to just 1’30”.
As the peloton began to break up on the first hills of the loop, the Leberg, Valkenberg and Eikenmolen a group containing Greipel and Muravyev and Gusev managed to make it across.
With 56km to go Leif Hoste (Katusha) suffered a big crash; the double Ronde van Vlaanderen runner up was taken to hospital with blood streaming from a cut to his face, seriously jeopardising his chances in this coming Sunday’s race.
With the gap to the leaders coming down to around a minute, Gert Steegmans (Quick Step), Westra managed to get away from another chasing group with 46km to go.
The two riders managed to bridge across to the swelling group up front; joining at 38km to go as the gap to the peloton grew to 1’28”.
The speed on the flat sections strung the peloton into one long line and a number of small groups began to detach from the back; one rider to lose contact was Jimmy Casper.
Despite this apparent pace though, the lead groups advantage was coming down only slowly.
A number of attacks followed, from riders including, Leigh Howard (HTC-Highroad) with 31km to go, and 2007 race winner Alessandro Ballan (BMC Racing) with 30km to go; the former World champion had more luck getting a brief gap that the Australian and tried to bridge across on the third ascension of the Leberg.
Sébastien Rosseler (RadioShack) bridged across to Ballan though, bringing the front of the peloton with him and the attack was over. The increase in pace lowered the gap to 36 seconds at the top though, with 27km to go.
The length of the break began to have an effect on its members by now too, as Debusschere was dropped and quickly passed by the peloton.
The next to attack was Sylvain Chavanel (Quick Step); the Frenchman, who had been one of the heroes of yesterday’s Gent-Wevelgem, took Tiziano Dall’Antonia (Liquigas-Cannondale) and Rosseler with him and began to scythe his way through the dropped riders of the breakaway.
Up front the attacks began with Greipel the first to make a move with 24km to go; he was going nowhere though, thanks to attentiveness from Westra. Immediately afterwards though Gusev accelerated with Muravyev on his wheel, Greipel and Westra quickly latched on and, all of a sudden, there were four riders in the lead.
Groups were splintering all over the place on the Valkenberg, but the Chavanel trio was still carving its way through. The Frenchman was doing almost all of the work but seemed to be gaining on the four up front; he trailed by just 38 seconds, with the peloton at 1’23”.
Gusev was in no mood to be caught though, so he and Murayev, who had Rosseler approaching from behind on the wheel of Chavanel, were continually accelerating. On the Eikenmolen though, the final climb with just 11km to go, Westra was the one that got away; the Dutchman didn’t get far though and the group reformed soon afterwards.
First Sky, then Astana took control of the front of the peloton and, with the climbing over, began to reel in those up front. Just as it looked as though Chavanel was about to tow his group up to the leaders he suddenly had the peloton breathing down his neck.
With 6km to go the Frenchman finally succumbed; it seemed that, with Sky taking over the chase and their lead a slim 12 seconds, that the four men up front would soon be next.
Luckily for the breakaway though, Westra had the wily old head of Vacansoleil-DCM teammate, and Belgan champion, Stijn Devolder interfering with the front of the peloton. While the peloton could see the men up front whenever the road straightened, it could not seem to make up the last few seconds necessary to make the catch.
Chavanel had another attempt to get across, with Romain Zingle (Cofidis) on his wheel, with 5km to go but he could not get far this time. Steve Chainel (FDJ) was the next to try it with just 3km to go; he was quickly caught but the four up front still incredibly held 7 seconds, which increased to 10 seconds at the 2km banner.
Inside the final kilometre the peloton was catching the breakaway, inch by inch, but as they pulled into the finishing straight it was plain that the four riders were going to make it. Greipel jumped with 200m to go and easily overcame the other three; Westra was closest to the German, with Gusev and Muravyev locked together behind.
Feillu and the other sprinters were right on their heels as the peloton finishes in same time; close, but not close enough.