Dwars Door Vlaanderen – Sylvain Chavanel «This 5th place is a good sign»

Out-performing the entire peloton, Niki Terpstra (Omega Pharma-Quickstep) took a solo victory at the finish line in Waregem to bag his second Dwars door Vlaanderen, or A Travers la Flandres as the French would have it.

Sylvain Chavanel, though he already put in an extraordinary effort at Milan-San Remo this past Sunday, still managed to ride himself into 5^th place in the final sprint with the chasing peloton.  Before preparing to return to the IAM Cycling hotel, the five-time individual time trial champion of France expressed his satisfaction with his performance.

“It’s not bad, particularly if I think that I finished 4^th in a sprint against guys like Farrar, Bozic and ahead of Gatto and Hutarovich.  While certainly this is only a minor placing, I have another chance in two days.  Today, there was nothing to be done against Terpstra.  I stayed in the front wheels, and for the final corner Roger Kluge and Aleksejs Saramotins placed me in a perfect position.  Actually, I was not feeling all that well at the start of the day, but everything began to click as the day progressed.  This 5^th place is a good sign and I will take it without regret.”

Directeur sportif, Eddy Seigneur declared himself satisfied with the overall result in this first race on the Flanderian program for IAM Cycling.

“Pelucchi was tired after Milan-San Remo.  But I saw good things, especially from Roger Kluge and Aleksejs Saramotins.  Saramotins was one of the strongest in a breakaway that lasted for more than 130 kilometers.  He tried to follow Terpstra up the Paterberg, but just didn’t have the reserves for an effort like that.  But that didn’t prevent him from providing invaluable assistance to Chavanel in the lead up to the final sprint.”