Steurs steals a march in Qatar
- By Ben Delaney
- Published Feb. 8, 2010
- Updated Feb. 8, 2010 at 3:21 PM UTC
Geert Steurs (Topsport) won the second stage of the Tour of Qatar, outsprinting his breakaway companion Wouter Mol (Vacansoleil).
Behind, the field had split into four main groups as Cervélo TestTeam and Quick Step drove the main chase in the whipping crosswinds.
It was an emotional win for Steurs, whose Topsport teammate Frederiek Nolf died at this race last year in his sleep. On the 90-minute transfer to the stage start, the Topsport team had pictures of Nolf taped inside their cars.
“I’m so happy that I can win the stage for him today,” Steurs said.
On a warm and windy day that began at a camel racetrack, the crosswind specialists got right down to work in Stage 2.
Team Sky rider Kurt-Asle Arvesen broke his collarbone in a crash soon after the start. “Shit continues to happen,” he wrote on Twitter after the race. Arvesen broke his collarbone at the Tour de France last year.
Mol and Steurs attacked nearly from the gun, setting out on an all-day break in the howling wind and building an advantage that topped out at nearly 23 minutes.
After about an hour of racing, with the breakaway’s gap ballooning out of control, Garmin-Transitions went to the front. Team Sky, which had Edvald Boasson Hagen in the leader’s jersey, then added a few men to the effort.
As the race proceeded across the desert, changes in direction meant changes in the strong wind. When the race turned into a crosswind, Cervélo TestTeam amassed at the front of the field and punched it.
Still smarting from a one-minute penalty levied against them in Sunday’s team time trial, Cervélo set about putting things to right, driving an echelon at the front until the peloton cracked into four pieces. Three-time race winner Tom Boonen was in the front group with three Quick Step teammates, Cervélo’s Heinrich Haussler was there with four. Garmin-Transitions sprinter Tyler Farrar was alone, but still up there in the 24-man move.
Sky had no one. The gap to Boasson Hagen in the second echelon quickly jumped to 30 seconds.
Haussler said the penalty Cervélo received for Haussler putting his hand on Gabriel Rasch during the TTT had no effect on stage 2.
“We would have ridden exactly the same even if we hadn’t lost a minute yesterday,” Haussler said.
After an hour of the 17-man group chasing the front 24-man group, things went from bad to worse for race leader Boasson Hagen as he punctured and lost contact with the second group. Ahead, Mol and Steurs labored on, but their advantage had dwindled to four minutes with 15km to go.
In the closing kilometers, the leading pair’s advantage was safe as was the first chase group’s gap over the second main echelon. Attacking and counterattacking ensued in the first big group, which had been riding a hard tempo for about two hours, and the result was three smaller groups barring down on the line.
Coming into the finish, Steurs took the sprint from Mol and pointed to the sky as he came across the line. As he screeched to a stop alongside his team car just past the finish, his director and support staff yelled and laughed as they gathered around to congratulate him. For his efforts on the day, Mol took the leader’s jersey from Boasson Hagen.
Two minutes later, Milram’s Roger Kluge took the sprint for third from the shattered remnant of the front group ahead of Haussler, Philippe Gilbert (Omega Lotto), Roger Hammond (Cervélo) and Boonen.
When the dust cleared, the top five on general classification was Mol, Steurs, Kluge, Boonen and Marcus Burghardt (BMC).
Because of the one-minute penalty from the team time trial, Haussler and his Cervélo teammates Roger Hammond and Jeremy Hunt are sitting 13th through 15th; they would have been third through fifth.
But that is no longer up for debate. The question at the Tour of Qatar now is whether the two men from small teams — the Dutch Vacansoleil and Belgian Topsport Valaanderen — will be able to maintain their two-minute advantage against the ProTour squads over the final four days of the race.
Stage 3 of the Tour of Qatar is a 137km affair from Dukhan on the west coast to Mesaieed, south of Doha on the east coast.
FILED UNDER: News / Race Report / Road TAGS: Geert Steurs / Topsport / Tour of Qatar
Ben Delaney
Delaney is the former editor in chief for Velo and VeloNews.com. A journalism graduate of the University of New Mexico, Delaney is responsible for all editorial content online and in the magazine. He's a former (but never very good) Cat. 1 racer. He lives in Boulder, Colorado, with his wife and two children. He can be found on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ben_delaney