Olav Kooij (Visma-Lease a Bike) stormed to victory in the BEMER Cyclassics one-day race, timing his sprint perfectly to the line ahead of a charging Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) and Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty) in Hamburg.
Milan was positioned well on the wheel of lead-out man Simone Conssoni, however, he got boxed in when Kooij and Girmay opened up past his right-hand shoulder and got the jump on him.
The Italian managed to find a lane to sprint and try to close down the flying Dutchman but it was simply too late despite his remarkable closing speed and Kooij held on at the line for his seventh WorldTour win of the season. Milan ended the day second after pipping Girmay with a strong bike throw as the Eritrean rounded out the podium.
There was a series of attacks throughout the 177.5km route heading out and back to the northern German port city, with the most threatening coming on the penultimate ascent of the Waseberg climb (0.7km at 8.4%) through Alex Aranburu (Movistar) and Fabio Christen (Q36.5).
They would stay away until the final ascent with 15km to go, however, the Swiss rider couldn’t hold on and the Spanish champion was eventually reeled in with under 13km to go. This left things up to Kooij, Milan and the other sprinters to recover from the steep inclines and battle it out in the city.
But Kooij wasn’t exactly confident that he would be able to muster up such a sprint given how he crashed out of the Renewei Tour before stage 2 just over a week ago.
“I didn’t really know how I would be today, I just had quite an easy week to recover from a crash so we didn’t know. I also told the guys that I was not feeling too good and that they could follow attacks if they wanted. But they motivated me to fight and to do the sprint and in the end, it was a nice surprise,” said Kooij in his winner’s interview also describing the run for home.
“We turned in a good position in the corner with 2km to go and we knew that was important so then I followed the guys at Bora and Christophe [Laporte] passed me and kept the speed high and let find a good wheel. Then I was able to launch the sprint and just hold on.”
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