The best German was Max Walscheid in twelfth place. “There were a lot of close situations, I touched the brakes more than once. The track was okay, the wind was very much from the front. So everyone was still there. That made it very unorganized and hectic,” said Walscheid.
The main theme is the Great Belt Bridge
Although 202.2 kilometers had to be covered between Roskilde and Nyborg, the main topic in the peloton over the past few days was the final. There, the 18-kilometre-long bridge over the Great Belt had to be mastered, and the fear of wind crests was great. Tour director Christian Prudhomme only decided on Saturday morning which side of the bridge the field should be led over. Apparently the focus on the final kilometers was so great that the stage mutated into a bore.
Like the day before in Copenhagen, several hundred thousand spectators lined the route around the festival city of Roskilde. The Dane Magnus Cort insisted and pulled away from the field with the Norwegian Sven Erik Byström. The tour organizers found three smaller hills on the Danish main island of Zealand. Cort crossed them all first, thus securing the first mountain jersey of this tour. About 45 kilometers before the finish, Cort’s escape was over, Byström was caught shortly afterwards – and the final on the Great Belt began.
However, it wasn’t the wind that caused the excitement, but the nervousness in the field. After only a few hundred meters on the bridge, Lampaert, the winner of the opening round, was involved in a fall. Only four kilometers later, with the support of two helpers, Lampaert managed to catch up to the field, which was reduced to around 100 riders. On the second part of the connection across the Great Belt there was a headwind, which neutralized all attacks and finally led to the sprint final.
Meanwhile, the corona virus continues to cause nervousness in the field. Ironically, several cases were reported by Lampaert’s QuickStep-AlphaVinyl team. The sporting director Tom Steels was just as corona positive as the press spokesman. Overall, the number of cases in the Belgian team’s staff has risen to seven within a week. Tim Declerq, who had to travel home shortly before the Grand Départ in Copenhagen, was the only driver to have been hit so far.