Edvald Boasson Hagen (Team Columbia) made up for his error of the day before and won the sprint in the sixth stage of the Eneco Tour. Putting in a last minute burst of speed, he managed to get by a frustrated Jimmy Engoulvent (Credit Agricole), who pounded his handlebars in anger at being beaten, and Serguei Ivanov of Astana. Boasson Hagen's team-mate André Greipel held on to the leader's jersey.
Until Monday's stage, the 21 year-old Norwegian had been in second place overall only seconds behind his team-mate, but he dropped out of contention when he ended up on the wrong side of a split in the peloton on stage five and lost nearly 15 minutes.
"This is kind of revenge for what happened yesterday," Boasson Hagen said. "It was a real pity to lose so much time and so any chance of overall victory. I took the sprint and became leader on the road, but then I went a bit too far back in the peloton and they attacked at the front. I tried to chase but it was impossible and so I lost a lot of time."
Engoulvent was part of a nine-man escape group which got away about 30 km into the race, and very nearly made it to the end. The peloton didn't catch the group until within the final kilometres, and even then the French rider attacked again and had hopes of winning until the speedy Viking pulled past him to take the win.
