Team RadioShack’s Robbie McEwen (39) took his first victory of the season by beating Alexander Kristoff and Yauheni Hutarovich in a mass sprint in the fourth stage of the Tour de Wallonie.
“The guys did a really good job staying in the front and keeping myself and Manuel Cardoso out of the wind and up where we needed to be,” explained a happy McEwen after a fast stage with the finish in Mouscron. “Towards the end and in the final, Bjørn Selander did a good job for me, keeping me in position and out of the wind and following my instructions right until the last 1.5 kilometer where I took Bennati’s wheel on the lead out of Leopard-Trek. I was originally going to pull the sprint for Cardoso since the team worked for me yesterday and it didn’t work out. But I was in the perfect position and Manuel lost some positions at the crucial moment, so we had to cut to plan B. That plan was pretty good.”
Team director Viatcheslav Ekimov agreed. “I see a very motivated Team RadioShack in this race. There is no pressure but they all want to show something. The team has to leave behind the bad luck we had in the Tour de France. Earlier this week Ben Hermans was already close to a stage victory too. This is nice.”
Robbie McEwen is a triple winner of the Tour de France’s green jersey sprinter’s classification. He has twelve stage wins in the Tour the France, another twelve in the Tour of Italy, plus five wins in Paris-Brussels. This season he aims to win the rainbow jersey for Team RadioShack at the World Championships in Copenhagen in September.
“I didn’t see much of the Tour de France as I was concentrated on my own training,” continued McEwen. “I just trained at home easy for a week, then I went to the South of France and trained a lot in the hills. A week before this race, back in Belgium I planned to used this Tour de Wallonie to get some rhythm back again. I found my rhythm quite quickly. This is promising for the next couple of months. I am still very ambitious. Since the beginning of the season the World Championships in Copenhagen is a big objective. I think I can do a big preparation by doing this race and races like Eneco Tour, Hamburg, Plouay and Fourmies. I just need to be selected now. Hopefully that will be the case.”
Result Stage 4: Engien-Mouscron, 151.6 km
1 Robbie McEwen (Team RadioShack) 3:21:53; 2 Alexander Kristoff; 3 Yauheni Hutarovich; 4 Michael Van Staeyen; 5 Kenny Dehaes; 6 Kristof Goddaert; 7 Jonas Vangenechten; 8 Greg Van Avermaet; 9 Daniele Bennati; 10 Joost van Leijen
General Classification after four stages:
1 Greg Van Avermaet 17:30:08; 2 Joost van Leijen; 3 Ben Hermans (Team RadioShack) 0:16; 4 Nikolay Trusov 0:17; 5 Michal Golas 0:20; 6 Edwig Cammaerts; 7 Thomas Degand; 8 Bert De Waele; 9 Koen de Kort 0:2; 10 Nikolas Maes 0:26
