Cycling
Olav Kooij has won the fifth stage in Paris-Nice, after impressively remounting Mads Pedersen. Along the way, the Belgians showed themselves: Victor Campenaerts set up a duo attack, and in the final, Remco Evenepoel tried it himself. Both without success.
On the fifth day of the race, the peloton was presented with a bumpy course, but in principle not too difficult for strong sprinters à la Mads Pedersen. The break of the day was soon formed: our compatriot Dries De Bondt was joined by Alexis Gougeard, Mathijs Paasschens, Mathias Norsgaard, Pierre Latour and Sandy Dujardin. The race situation seemed to be fixed, but then Victor Campenaerts took action.
The Belgian from Lotto-Dstny launched a counterattack with teammate Pascal Eenkhoorn as the gap with the six leaders (where they still had a teammate with Paasschens) and the peloton was only a minute. The last time Campenaerts and Eenkhoorn attacked together was in last year’s Tour de France, where the Belgian almost set his Dutch teammate on the way to the stage victory.
Campenaerts’ action increased the pace in the peloton and caused problems for some sprinters. Arvid de Kleijn gave up and Fabio Jakobsen – who was ill – also gave up. Gerben Thijssen also had to release the role, but still stayed on course. The pace remained high in the peloton, resulting in Campenaerts and co’s lead shrinking to twenty seconds with twenty kilometers to go. Ten kilometers from the finish, their adventure was over.
That was the signal for Quentin Pacher to accelerate on an ascending lane. Pedersen actually responded himself, but they couldn’t get away. The game was in full swing, because suddenly there was a battle for the pendulum. And, how could it be otherwise, Remco Evenepoel also joined in. What’s more: he himself once shook the tree. But the party was cancelled, a bunch sprint was inevitable.
In that bunch sprint, Pedersen was the first and also seemed to be on his way to the stage victory, but Olav Kooij came like a devil out of a box and went over Pedersen with a lot of speed. For the Dutchman it is already his second stage victory in this Paris-Nice, after he also managed to beat Pedersen in the first stage. Thanks to his second place, the Dane takes over the green jersey from Laurence Pithie. Australian Luke Plapp retains the leader’s jersey.
