Europcar's Bryan Coquard has won the opening stage of 61st Four Days Of Dunkirk race.
Stage one of this 2.1HC race which is now over five days not four, was from Dunkirk to Orchies and saw Slik, Gerard and Van Hecke take a five minute lead ahead of a peloton of mainly French and Belgian riders as well as Englishman Russ Downing of the Cult Energy team.
With six of the seven sectors of cobbles left to complete on a 178.7km stage, around forty to forty five riders were in a front group going into the final fifty kilometres, having caught up to Le Lac of FDJ who had failed to gain any ground and earlier catching the first break of the day.
Gaudin of AG2R, Edward Theuns of Topsport and Alex Blaine of Team Marseille got away and had a 35 second lead with thirty two kilometres left.
Six kilometres later and Bryan Coquard led a group of four riders including Duchesne, Konovalovas and Hutarovich up to Gaudin, Theuns and Blaine to form a new seven man group which was nursing a lead of twenty seconds with 23.2kms left on a sunny day in Northern France.
On to the penultimate secteur of cobbles which was a two kilometre section with twelve kilometres left and Antoine Duchesne, led the front group who had a lead of fourteen seconds.
With 6.6kms, the second group on the road was just behind Coquard's group who continued to work away with all of the riders taking big turns to maintain a twenty second lead with 4.1kms remaining.
Their lead was down to eight seconds as they went over the final section of cobbles. Steve Chanel of Cofidis, who is known for his cyclocross ability went after the escapers, who were now back on tarmaced roads.
The front group split with just over 1.5kms left and Konovalovas went with Bryan Coquard and Edward Theuns in his wheel.
Nobody was going to stop Bryan Coquard who picked his moment and road away to win in 4.10 35 ahead of Theuns, Konovalovas, Damien Gaudin and Bjorn Tharau.
"I am super happy to have won today," said Coquard. "Duschene did a great job for me and i want to try and win as many stages as possible. So far it has been some bad luck for me and Europcar but today it worked out well.
"We did the work all day and we pulled it off."
Coquard now leads the race from Edward Theuns by four seconds.
Source: DSG
