Mwell… nobody gave a fuck about GC during the 3^rd and last stage. Not only there wasn’t a single attack in the finish, but nobody tried to grab a time bonus despite the fact that there were no less than 3 Intermediate Sprints with time bonuses!

To add to the nonsense, this is on a 2.Pro, where stages almost don’t bring any UCI points, while the final GC is pretty generous in UCI points. Despite the fact that the winner broke away in the last 2 editions on the same circuit, everyone was just waiting/riding for a sprint this year.

So basically, the classification was determined by the 6 km long prologue, among the 15 riders who were in the first group in stage 2 (the hilly one).

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The Pedersen case.

His prologue wasn’t a success. 20^th at 15 seconds over 6 km. Pajur Romet was closer to him, than he was close to the winner…

On stage 2, as he already did a couple of times earlier this year, he rode like he had his magic legs from the previous years. Expect he hasn’t, even against the field of riders in Mayenne (which wasn’t so bad this year). The legs he has now require him to ride more intelligently. One may wonder if he wasn’t just rehearsing efforts, I don’t know.

On stage 3, his team only rode to bring him to the sprint. There was an interesting movement, far from the finish, with 2 Lotto (including Veistroffer) and 2 Lidl-Trek (including Pedersen), but the latter refused to relay the Lottos, a pity for it would have been fun and the teams leading the peloton were in complete panic when they saw this movement. On top of his tendency to start too early, he took way too much wind, for he lost the wheels of his teammate SKA. He was easily beaten by Kooij, but beat everyone else.

Since nobody rode for GC, he was the only rider, among the first 30 riders in GC, winning a place in GC ranking (actually 2 places) on the last stage, thanks to the time bonus at finish. :)