News – 3rd Sky win for Viviani

ALPS_BANNER

Elia Viviani got the Eneco Tour off to a perfect start for Team Sky with a well-timed sprint off the wheel of Andre Greipel to win the opening stage

RST Cycle Clothing & Trigon Bikes

News – 3rd Sky win for Viviani

Team Sky Press Release (amended)
The Italian was brought to the front of the peloton by his team-mates in the closing stages before finding the perfect wheel in Andre Greipel (Lotto Belisol). The big German kicked early but it was Viviani who emerged from his slipstream to take an impressive victory, fending off the late charge of Danny van Poppel (Trek Factory Racing) and Jean-Pierre Drucker (BMC Racing) at the line.

Andre Greipel said after on twitter, “First stage Eneco Tour finished…Lotto Soudal made it close to perfect but I got the timing wrong today. Congrats to Elia Viviani for the win”

That win moved Viviani into the both the race lead and the points jersey in Bolsward, with a four-second advantage overall courtesy of bonus seconds on the line. Full of praise for his team-mates, Viviani explained the final run-in, saying: “We preferred to stay at the front to stay out of all the crashes. In the final kilometre, Andy Fenn took me and put me on the best wheel. When I saw Greipel’s wheel, I took that and I thought ‘okay I’m in a good position’.

“When he started to sprint he went very fast, and I thought, ‘now I wait a second and then I go’. I think I did 200 metre sprint. I had good legs in the final today and after a long gap without races following the Giro, this is the best way to start a new second part of the season.”

“The plan is in the last kilometre to take the best wheel we can. We know Lotto have a big team for the lead-out train, the same for Lampre. So we knew one of these would be a good train and it turned out to be Lotto today.”

Send your results as well as club, team & event news here

Other Results on VeloUK (including reports containing results)

Other News on VeloUK

Tags: