"The crosswind made the sprints really hard to lead, so I waited until the third chance and went full gas."

Those were the words of Astana's Laurens De Vreese after stage one at the Eneco Tour. De Vreese escaped early into the day's only breakaway with five other riders during the opening stage in Friesland, a northern province in the Netherlands famous as the heart of Dutch ice skating.

Organizers created a special 'Golden Sprint' near the end of the stage with three intermediate finish lines 500m apart and each worth valuable time bonuses to the first three riders. From the breakaway De Vreese found himself second for the first Golden Sprint and then rested to take first in the final for a total time bonus of five seconds on Monday. Stage one finished some time later in a mass sprint won by Elia Viviani of Italy -

Astana Pro Team benefits greatly from De Vreese's bonus seconds as the Belgian rider is now 4th in General Classification, five seconds behind race leader Viviani. With De Vreese in 4th the Astana Pro Team car caravan position improves from 20th to 4th for Tuesday's stage two, and will greatly improve feeding and communication for the riders and staff during the race.