Van Den Broeck wins alone in Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse

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Jurgen Van Den Broeck (Omega Pharma-Lotto) made good use of some recent mountain training to take the first ever win of his professional career. The lanky Belgian finished fifth overall in the 2010 Tour de France but until today had only ever won criteriums during his nine-year career.

He has spent several weeks training for the Tour de France in the Alps and used his form to make a well-timed and sustained attack on the climb to the finish in Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse. He attacked early on the climb with Kanstantsin Siutsou (HTC-Highroad) and French national champion Thomas Voeckler (Team Europcar) but when the peloton pulled them back, Van Den Broeck attacked again with 2.5km to go and quickly opened a decisive gap.

Joaquim Rodriguez (Katusha) tried to go after him in the final kilometre but could only finish six seconds behind, while Cadel Evans (BMC) was a solid third at seven seconds, with Alexandre Vinokourov (Astana) fourth at the same time. Nicolas Roche (Ag2r-La Mondiale) finished a fine fifth and Edvald Boasson Hagen (Team Sky) showed his form by finishing sixth. Bradley Wiggins (Team Sky) was eleventh at 15 seconds, one place behind 2010 overall winner Jani Brajkovic (RadioShack).

“It’s my first professional win and my first mountain stage too,” Van Den Broeck said immediately after his victory.

“It’s good for my moral because I’ve been away from home for five weeks training in the big mountains for the Tour de France. My legs didn’t feel super but I felt strong when I attacked.”

Van Den Broeck revealed that his teammate Jurgen Roelandts convinced him to go for the stage victory.

“My legs were ok and so earlier in the race I said to myself ‘Why not attack?’ I saw the HTC rider go and Roelandts said ‘Go!’ I’m glad I did.”

“I was ‘a bloc’ but when the peloton came up to us, I said to myself that it was now all or nothing. They were a bloc too and so I managed to stay away.”

The decisive final climb

The seven kilometre climb to Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse was a real mountain finish but not steep because of an almost flat middle section. Many in the peloton thought they had a chance of taking the stage victory and that resulted in a quiet stage but a fast and furious finale.

Jérémy Roy (FDJ) was the first rider to attack after eight kilometres, hoping the stage would be decided by a break, but he was quickly caught and then Sven Vandousselaere (Omega Pharma-Lotto), Leonardo Duque (Cofidis) and Vincent Jérôme (Europcar) got away to form the early move of the day. Their gap quickly reached two minutes, then four minutes and peaked at 5:35 at the top of the Côte de Saint-André after 39km. But Rabobank lead the chase with help from other teams who were all riding to set up their team leader’s for the final climb.

The trio were caught with ten kilometres to go and rightly shook hands after sharing 100km together up the road. They were quickly dropped as well, as first Siutsou, Van Den Broeck and then Voeckler joined forced and went on the attack. The peloton refused to let them go but then could do nothing to stop Van Den Broeck accelerating again as he pursued his first ever professional victory.

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