Peter Sagan of Tinkoff has won a stage of the Eneco Tour for the second day running.
Stage four was a 202km jaunt from Aalter near Gent, past Brussels to St-Pieters-Leeuw and featured two closing 32km laps which included sections of cobbles.
British rider Mark McNally (Wanty-Groupe Gobert) was again in the break and was joined by Brian Van Goethem and Sjoerd Van Ginneken (Roompot Oranje Peloton) and Topsport Vlaanderen-Baloise's Bert Van Lerberghe.
They had a lead of four minutes but with 66kms, they were caught and Tom Dumolin of Giant Alpecin, Nelson Oliveira (Movistar) and Nico Denz (AG2R-La Mondiale) led before Astana's Dimitriy Gruzdev and Andriy Grivko were ahead until the final few kilometres.
Jasper Stuyven (Trek-Segafredo) caught up with the pair on the descent of the Bruine Put but with two kilometres to go, it was all over and the race descended into a sprint which Peter Sagan took in a time of 4.42.12 ahead of Andre Greipel, Alexander Kristoff, Arnaud Demare and Dylan Groenwegen.
The victory for Sagan meant that he now leads the race by seven seconds from Rohan Dennis and the Slovakian said: “There are some riders who are not happy [with the final sprint]. I didn’t know I won because it was a very close sprint with Andre and I had to wait for the final results. I’m very happy because it was another sprint with very good timing; a headwind finish.
“I had a little problem with Démare, but that is sprinting. If I did something bad, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I did. I was in my line and he was very aggressive to me.
“I’m happy that I got more seconds from today and we want to make a good team time trial tomorrow, then we will see how we are going. We want to do our best here.
Source: DSG
