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Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) prevailed within the bunch dash on stage 2 of the Tour de Luxembourg, holding off race chief Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) in Schifflange. Swiss rider Robin Froidevaux (Tudor Professional Biking) was third on the stage.
Van der Poel prolonged his lead within the basic classification, not being threatened by Pedersen, who completed eight minutes down on the opening stage. With Froidevaux out-sprinting Christophe Laporte (Visma-Lease a Bike), the Frenchman’s deficit to Van der Poel went out to 10 seconds. Andreas Kron (Lotto Dstny) continues in third place at 12 seconds.
Pedersen’s victory made up for the lack of the group’s GC chief Mattias Skjelmose, who crashed out of the race in the course of the stage.
“We misplaced Skjelmose right now and the plan was to do the GC for him,” Pedersen mentioned. “At the least now we will depart with a stage win, however in fact, we wish to have extra. Tomorrow is a extremely onerous day and it does not go well with me however Quinn [Simmons] is doing very well and is in fine condition so we’ll attempt to set him up for one thing good tomorrow.”
Pepijn Reinderink (Soudal-Quickstep) went on the assault early within the stage in pursuit of extra factors within the mountains classification, taking Alexandre Kess (Luxembourg) alongside for the experience till taking most factors atop the hors-categorie Montée de Steinsel, at which level Reinderink sat up, leaving Kess to carry off the peloton alone.
The Luxembourger’s hole hovered round two minutes till the ultimate 40 kilometres, when the peloton entered a crosswind part and the tempo ramped up, in a short time bringing Kess to inside 30 seconds. Figuring out it could be a straightforward catch, the bunch hovered simply behind till catching the lone escapee with 31.5 km to go.
Because the race reached the ultimate 25 kilometres, Carl Fredrik Hagen (Q36.5) launched an assault on the climb within the first native circuit and claimed the three-second time bonus at first of the ultimate lap. However he was handed by Victor Vercouillie (Flanders-Baloise), who launched a strong counter-attack with 19km to go.
Reinderink went off in solo pursuit on the penultimate climb as Vercouillie loved almost a minute’s lead over the peloton, and the Quickstep rider closed in shortly, catching the Belgian with 13.8km remaining. They conspired to carry a 10-second lead heading into the ultimate eight kilometres however Lidl-Trek have been in full pursuit.
Sensing the hazard of being caught, Reinderink attacked with 6km to go, leaving Vercouillie behind. A crash within the chasing peloton did little to disrupt the livid chase, and a cut up peloton caught the escapees forward of the ultimate climb with 4.3km remaining.
Juan Ayuso (UAE Group Emirates) put in a strong counter-attack on the ultimate climb, and whereas the transfer did not stick, it additional diminished the lead group. Lidl-Trek led into the twisting, turning closing two kilometres.
Pedersen opened up the dash early and whereas Van der Poel was on his wheel, he could not come round and needed to concede the stage to the Dane.
Outcomes
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