The final day of racing at Volta ao Algarve saw a fierce afternoon of action under the Portuguese sun, with Team dsm-firmenich PostNL’s Gijs Leemreize riding brilliantly to make the day’s breakaway of 20 which finally went clear after 50 kilometres of hard racing. The group managed to build on its gap and increase it to over three minutes at its maximum, but the peloton always kept a close eye on them. Behind a strong counter attack was launched by Healy and Van Aert, with the duo bridging to the break, before pushing on. Digging deep, it was only Leemreize from the original break who could follow and the trio charged towards the final climb. Unfortunately, the bunch had also done the same and ultimately caught Leemreize back in sight of the flamme rouge, where the young Dutchman fought hard to the line to take 12th place on the stage.
Leemreize expressed: “The goal for us was to be in the break with as many possible riders as we could . That was the plan of almost every team though, so the jumping and attacking took quite long. We were in all the big groups and in the end I was in the right one with around 20 riders. At one point Van Aert and Healy jumped to our break. I was able to follow them and hoped for the stage win for a second, but on the final climb the GC group came back and I just couldn’t follow anymore.”