After yesterday’s sprint finish, today’s stage at the Ronde de l’Oise featured some hilly terrain for our Development program. The first half was very hectic and the race saw some crashes. Unfortunately, Milan Kadlec came down in one of those crashes and had to abandon. After the race restarted following a short neutralization, Vincent Bodet went on the attack for the Development Team dsm-firmenich PostNL. Together with another rider they fought against the chasing bunch but got caught eventually. In the final hilly kilometres the team gave their best and Axel Källberg led the team home after having to hit the breaks to avoid a crash and losing some momentum.
After the stage, Axel Källberg said: “Longest day of the week, and today a break of two guys went pretty early up the road and then was joined by another guy. Unfortunately, Milan crashed out really early today. We rode well together the whole day and at one point we tried to make echelons but the wind came a bit too much from the front. Vincent got up the road with another guy after the early break got caught, but they were brought back about 20 kilometres before the finish. I could stay in a good position up the climbs and I was still in a perfect position with 1.5 kilometres to go but then I had to break to avoid crashing and lost too many positions. But overall we raced well together even though we did not get the result we wanted.”
