The last day of racing at the Renwi Tour saw the peloton faced with a hard classics-style parcours and one that featured elements of the Ronde van Vlaanderen with several passages of the famous Muur van Geraardsbergen, and an uphill cobbled drag to the finish. Diminished after a string of bad luck at the race, Team dsm-firmenich PostNL started with three riders for the final day; Timo Roosen, Bram Welten and Frank van den Broek. Setting out with the goal of supporting Van den Broek and seeing how far he could go in the hard finale, the team’s misfortune continued as Van den Broek was involved in a crash earlier in the race. Battling back to the peloton, Roosen provided good early support while Welten stuck with Van den Broek as long as possible. Following initially when the race opened up at around 80 kilometres to go, Van den Broek had to let go of the peloton when the pace increased once more in the last 50 kilometres, eventually teaming back up with Welten and they rode it to the line together.
Team dsm-firmenich PostNL coach Matt Winston said: “It was always going to be hard starting with only three but the guys did their best. It was a hard course and the race was on all day behind the big breakaway. Frank unfortunately had a crash but battled his way back to the peloton. However, that then took energy out of him so when when race properly opened up in the last 50 kilometres we missed that bit in the finale to go with it.”
