Rosseler continues RadioShack attack

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Following up on the success of teammate Chris Horner in the Basque tour, RadioShack's Sebastien Rosseler claimed the squad's latest win in the Brabantse Pijl. It was Rosseler's second win of the season after a solo victory on stage 4 of the Volta ao Algarve in February.

The Belgian helped a three-man breakaway hold off the furious chase from behind, and went on to out-sprint compatriot Thomas De Gendt (Topsport Vlaanderen-Mercator) and his former teammate Jurgen Van de Walle (Quick Step).

"I did my work the whole day," said Rosseler. "Maybe one lap I recovered a bit. I didn't want to attack earlier as I knew it was better if we stayed together.

"With three of us, we had a chance to stay in the front. Fighting alone against the rest would have been impossible."

The win was a surprise for Rosseler, who said he only went with the early move "to have some TV publicity for our sponsor, knowing that we would be caught by the peloton? I had such bad legs this morning in the beginning of the race. This is incredible."

Team Director Dirk Demol too thought the move would prove futile until the gap ballooned. "When we saw that the break got 8 minutes and 40 seconds, I started to believe in a happy ending. The chase behind by other teams was never well organized.

"Séba had some difficulties in the end, but that bad moment passed. I told him to stay in the back the last kilometer. We knew that the last 200 meters suited him well. The only unknown factor was that young rider from Topsport Vlaanderen. He appeared to be very dangerous in the end."

The victory is Rosseler's eighth as a professional, but his first ever one-day race win and comes after a string of bad fortune in the Classics. "Flat tires and crashes ruined my Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. This is a nice compensation, also for the work I've done last winter," concluded Rosseler.

"He deserved this," continued Demol. "I told Séba to believe in it. This is a big compensation for everything that went wrong for him in the classics so far. When you don't expect such a victory, it is twice as nice."

Rabobank's Paul Martens led a group of four to the line behind, with Philippe Gilbert (Omega Pharma-Lotto), Thomas Voeckler (Bouygues Telecom) and Bjorn Leukemans (Vacansoleil) falling less than a minute shy of making the juncture.

The race got underway on its new date, the Wednesday before Amstel Gold Race instead of the Wednesday before the Tour of Flanders. 170 riders took to the course, with Ben Hermans (RadioShack), Geoffrey Lequatre (RadioShack) and Filippo Baggio (Ceramica Flaminia) not at the start.

Jurgen Van De Walle of Quick Step was one of the first riders to get away, and when his first attempt didn't succeed, the second one did. He was joined by others, and eventually a six-man group was established.

Jurgen Van De Walle (Quick Step), Sebastian Rosseler (RadioShack), Enrico Peruffo (CarmioOro), Thomas De Gendt (Topsport Vlaanderen) Niki Eeckhout (An Post – Sean Kelly) and Alexander Gottfried (NetApp) built up a lead of 8:30 on this twisting, hilly course throughout western Belgium.

The chase was led by the two teams with the top favourites, Rabobank and Oscar Freire, and Omega Pharma-Lotto around Philippe Gilbert. But Eeckhout, De Gendt and Rosseler kept the pace high in the lead group.

Eventually, though, Eeckhout, Peruffo and Gottfried were no longer able to keep up the non-smurf-like pace and had to drop back, with Eeckhout abandoning. With 48 km to go, Rosseler, Van De Walle and De Gendt had one minute over their two chasers, with the peloton still six and a half minutes back.

Vacansoleil and Milram both helped with the lead work, but the gap dropped only slowly.

With 30km to go and a four-minute gap to the three leaders, the favourites in the peloton took advantage of a series of small hills to form an elite chase group. Philippe Gilbert (Omega Pharma-Lotto), led the charge, and after a few minutes, a group of four finally established itself with Gilbert, Thomas Voeckler (Bbox), Paul Martens (Rabobank) and Björn Leukemans (Vacansoleil). By 20 km to go, the gap had fallen to 2:44 for the four chasers, with the peloton at 3:13.

The strong chase group was unable to get more than 30 seconds ahead of an ever diminishing peloton and made little progress on closing the gap to the lead trio.

The chase and the long escape showed their effects, as the trhee leaders crossed the finish line for the penultimate circuit with a lead of only 1:37 over the chase group and the peloton at 2:02, led by Rabobank.

With only 6 km to go, it was clear though that the break would make it to the end, though the chasers didn't give up hope.

The three leaders crossed under the Flamme Rouge for the final time and headed up the final climb. De Gendt opened the sprint, but Rosseler came around at the last second to take the win.

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