MTN-Qhubeka put on impressive display of attacking riding in Luxembourg

Matti Breschel (Tinkoff Saxo) won the 4th stage of the Tour of Luxembourg and the Dane was also rewarded with leaders yellow jersey after his efforts. Rudy Molard (Cofidis) took 2nd on the stage with Sergey Lagutin (Rusvelo) in 3rd place. Team MTN-Qhubeka p/b Samsung had Linus Gerdemann finish in 8th place on the stage.

The Tour of Luxembourg queen stage saw 4 riders go on the attack from the very first kilometer. Pit Schlechter (Leopard Development), Ivan Balykin (Rusvelo), Tom Dernies (Wallonie – Bruxelles) and Rueben Menendez (Differdange – Losch) were the 4 riders that would go on to lead the race while the peloton kept the quartet at around 4 minutes for the better part of the stage. With 60km to go, the gap had been reduced to 2’30” and our South African rider Jay Thomson saw this as a good opportunity to jump across to the leaders. Thomson reached the escapees with ease and then the real chase from behind started.

It was Trek Factory Racing that took responsibility for the chase and their high tempo resulted in a number of riders getting shelled out the back. With 25km to go the race came back together and then the attacks from the stage favourites started. First Frank Schleck had a go and then Gerdemann put in a nice counter to lead the race solo for a short while. It kept coming back together though until Daniel Teklehaimanot and Greg Henderson (Lotto – Belisol) got away. With 9km to go the duo had 24″ on a small group of favourites.

With 6km to go the race was once again brought back together before the final winning move of 5 riders went clear. In the small group sprint Breschel was not going to be beaten. In the select chase group of only 28 riders, Team MTN-Qhubeka p/b Samsung still managed to have 4 riders present, capping off a good day for the African team.

Rider – Jay Thomson

Today was a really good day for the team. Linus asked me to go with 60km to go to try and light up the racing. I made it across the 3min or so gap and was able to stay out front until the first time up the climb on the finishing circuit. I felt great today so i am happy i could play my part at helping to set up Linus who was really incredible today.

Stage Results