Young upstarts Modern Adventure pull off a brilliant double at crash-marred final Wallonia stage

Ben Oliver won the fifth and final stage of the Tour of Wallonia on Friday. The finale was decided by a sprint, in which there was a heavy crash. It also made for a double triumph for the New Zealander, who moved past Riley Sheehan (NSN) in the general classification thanks to the bonus seconds.

It was De Lie who had won again on Thursday with a superb final kilometre. The Bull of Lescheret therefore moved up to third place in the standings, in which Sheehan still held the lead. The final stage would not be easy on Friday, so anything was still possible in the Belgian 2.Pro race.

In a nervous opening phase, a large group initially got away, but that was later corrected. In the end, a ten-man move went clear, with no fewer than seven Belgians in it. A second group would bridge across midway through the race, but that ultimately came to nothing.

The peloton came back in good time and so the finale was always going to be long. Well, peloton... the group was down to around 35 riders, which showed just how hard the racing was on the final day in Belgium. It was accelerate, ease off, accelerate again and ease off again.

Pim Ronhaar managed to attack in the finale, and the Dutchman did so together with Spain’s Álvaro Sagrado. The duo quickly built a lead of 25 seconds, and in the end the Dutchman also dropped his companion. Still, Ronhaar’s move was over with 7 kilometres to go.

The pace was very high, helped by INEOS, but it was Red Bull rider Adrien Boichis who applied the pressure again deep in the finale. That was for teammate Laurence Pithie, but he in turn could not respond to an acceleration from Testfatsion. The Movistar rider was then brought back with just over 1.5 kilometres to go.

That left a sprint of about 25 riders to decide the stage. Oliver won that sprint, but there was also a heavy crash in it: only five riders were able to sprint all the way to the line. The New Zealander therefore also took the overall victory in the Tour of Wallonia.