CYCLING – The Drenthe trumps on honorary metal in Olympia’s Tour are the only and oldest fully Dutch stage race that started strongly. After day one, Bert-Jan Lindeman, Elmar Reinders and Tibor Del Grosso are in the top six. Arne Peters from Beekbergen is leading the charge.
After Thursday morning’s team time trial and the first stage, yesterday afternoon, Peters (Allinq) has a four-second lead in and around Hardenberg over three VolkerWessels riders: Maikel Zijlaard, Bert-Jan Lindeman and Roel van Sintmaartensdijk. In 5th place Elmar Reinders (Riwal Cycling Team) is 5 seconds behind Peters and Tibor Del Grosso is 7 seconds behind the first Metec rider from the stable of sports director Allard Engels.
Team Time Trial
Classification leader Peters owes his place to the win in the team time trial over 7.2 kilometers in Hardenberg. In that time trial, VolkerWessels finished second, Metec third, while Riwal took third place. Incidentally, all within ten seconds of Allinq.
Reinders second in first stage
Yesterday afternoon, the first stage (Hardenberg – Hardenberg over 74.6km) fell prey to British sprinter Matthew Gibson (WiV SunGod). Elmar Reinders, who actually started the sprint for teammate Alexander Salby, finished second. With that, de Drent, who won the Eleven Cities Race two weeks ago, earned four bonus seconds and thus caught up with Peters in the general classification. Another Drent who was tipped in advance for the first of a total of four stages in Olympia’s Tour, Roy Eefting from Grolloo, was not in the front group and finished 88th after almost two minutes.