A hillier day awaited the peloton at the Deutschland Tour on Friday afternoon, where Team dsm-firmenich PostNL made it their goal to animate the race and try and make things tougher. Trying to get a large group clear, not many of the other teams were keen so in the end a three rider break went clear. However, the gap was kept relatively close and around halfway into the day Bjoern Koerdt attacked and bridged across to the leaders. Due to his position on GC, the bunch had to keep things close and then going onto the main climb of the day it was all back together, this time with Kevin Vermaerke going clear in a four rider move. The chasing peloton kept them within grasping distance and on the first short ascent to the finish more attacks flew from the bunch, with Sean Flynn now joining Vermaerke in the lead group. For a while, it looked as if the front group was going to fight it out for the win but the peloton just made contact at the bottom of the last ascent, where the stage winning attack went. The team fought hard behind with Flynn sprinting to tenth place and with it moving up on GC.
Speaking at the finish Flynn said: “We wanted to make a harder stage today so we tried to keep the fight for the break going longer. That worked a bit but in the end the pace was quite relaxed for most of the day. Bjoern did well to open the stage up midway through, so the pace was high on the main climb of the race. Kevin got into a strong break on the climb which I later bridged across to. It was looking promising but unfortunately the peloton caught us right in the final kilometre. I did my best in the sprint and am fairly satisfied with my performance, and it’s also good to move up a little bit in the GC.”