Kevin Seeldraeyers (Astana) bounced back from a bad crash in the Paris-Nice in today's queen stage of the Tour of Turkey as he took a fine 2nd place behind Natnael Berhane (Europcar). Even though the race's queen stage is now behind the riders, Seeldraeyers' sports director Dmitriy Sedoun insists that the Kazakh team will continue to fight for the overall win.

Kevin Seeldraeyers had a very unfortunate start to the year as he crashed hard in one of the early stages of the Paris-Nice and due to injury he was kept out of competition for more than a month. He made his comeback in the Amstel Gold Race and also started the Fleche Wallonne but on both occasions he abandoned after having done his work for the team.

However, his long lay-off does not seem to have had to bad of an influence on his form. In today's queen stage of the Tour of Turkey he attacked on the day's final climb and set off in pursuit of the lone leader Serge Pauwels (Omega Pharma-Quick Step). He caught and dropped the Belgian and was later joined by eventual winner Natnael Berhane, Maxime Mederel (Sojasun), Mustafa Sayar (Konya), Darwin Atapuma (Colombia) and Angelo Pagani (Bardiani).

The latter two could not keep up the pace and it was left to the remaining four riders to battle it out for the victory. Berhane proved to have the strongest sprint but Seeldraeyers fought all the way to the line and ended 2nd only 6 seconds behind the day's winner.

"I attacked to catch up to Serge Pauwels and then I passed him, and the Europcar rider and one other guy from the Turkish team (Sayar, ed.) came with me," he explained. "The last 3km were steeper than I expected, and in the end I had enough power in the final 300m to hold on to second."

Seeldrayers in now 2nd overall 10 seconds behind Berhane. Last year the final general classification was almost identical to the outcome of today's stage but this year organizers have made the remaining part of the course much tougher. The key stage will be Friday's 6th stage which finishes at the top of a shorter climb.

With this opportunity still ahead of them the Astana team still believe that they will be able to take away the lead from Berhane while they also hope to see their sprinter Andrea Guardini take a stage victory in one of the bunch sprints expected during the remainder of the race.

"The sprints will come with some difficulty, but we can look to see Andrea Guardini in the remaining stages at the front in the final kilometer, and then push for Kevin on Friday," sports director Dmitriy Sedoun said. "This race is not over yet, and this year the organizers have guaranteed more excitement by adding a second mountaintop finish."

Starting at 13.15 you can follow all the action from tomorrow's stage on CyclingQuotes.com/live.