The Baloise Belgium Tour came to a close today with the traditional final stage in Brussels. Team dsm-firmenich PostNL rode well together throughout the day and were in a good position in the run-in towards the final bunch sprint of the week. They moved up with 3.5 kilometres to go when some bad luck with mechanicals interrupted the promising lead-out. The remaining riders tried to reshuffle but weren’t able to compete for a result in the fast and hard final sprint of the week.
After the stage, John Degenkolb said: “Compared to the last days, we did a better job of finding each other as a team and approaching the final together. Unfortunately, we had some bad luck in the final with some unfortunate mechanicals which made it quite difficult for us to compete in the final. Overall, this was not the week we hoped for, but we will take good learnings out of this race and focus now on the next goals together.”