Jussi Veikkanen won the sixth stage of the Deutschland Tour by taking the sprint of a successful escape group, but he may have made an enemy along the way. Shortly before the escape got away, Linus Gerdemann, who is leading the race, asked the Francaise des Jeux rider how far back he was.
"He told me ten minutes," Gerdemann told the ARD German television sender, so the Team Columbia rider let the escape group go.
However, he was later informed by Directeur Sportif Jan Schaffrath that the Finnish champion was actually only five and a half minutes back. After the stage, Gerdemann criticized Veikkanen as "a liar", saying, "If I had known that, I wouldn't have let him go. He'll get paid back for that. The cycling world is small. We'll meet again..."
Veikkanen denied the charges saying, "I told him that I was five and a half minutes back. Maybe Gerdemann didn't hear it right or it was a misunderstanding," he told the dpa.
