Theo Bos (Blanco) took his fourth sprint victory of the season in the first stage of yesterday's Criterium International. It would, however, have been impossible without a strong team that brought him back when he was dropped on the stage's only climb.

Theo Bos was a bit of an unknown heading into the opening stage of the Criterium International yesterday morning. The big sprinter is certainly one of the fastest in the race, but with a difficult climb on the route and a hard, uphill sprint in the end, there were certain doubts whether the Dutchman would be competitive in the end.

He proved any doubters wrong with a powerful win ahead of Nacer Bouhanni (FDJ) and Jonathan Cantwell (Team Saxo-Tinkoff) who are both much more suited to that kind of finish than the former track world champion. His win was the fourth of the season after victories in Volta ao Algarve and Tour de Langkawi earlier this year.

Bos would, however, never have been able to show off his fast finish, had it not been for an impressive team effort. The Dutchman was dropped on the climb, and it was only a concerted chase effort from teammates Juan Manuel Garate, Bram Tankink and Graeme Brown that brought the sprinter back in contention with less than 10 km to go.

Setting the record straight

The team had been dealt a hard blow by a weak performance in Friday's E3 where team captains Sep Vanmarcke and Lars Boom both failed to feature in the final. Sports director Michiel Elijzen was happy that an impressive team effort could set the record straight less than 24 hours after that disappointment

"At the team meeting this morning the members acknowledged the disappointing defeat yesterday in the E3 and we wanted to set the record straight and support our teammates with a victory today," he said. "And we did that! Not only the fastest man won the race today, but it was the man with the fastest team.”

Elijzen was especially impressed by the performance of lead-out man Brown who managed to bring Bos into position just moments after his hard chase effort.

“This was superb team work! After all the effort Brown put in the chase, he put Bos in the sprint who only managed to be in the right spot with 200 metres to go. Man, this was massive! This is our eleventh victory this year and we perhaps needed this one more than any other."

Encouraging time trial

The victory meant that Theo Bos was able to start the afternoon time trial in the leader's jersey. As expected, the sprinter was never in contention during the timed effort where the team focused on its GC captains Bauke Mollema and Wilco Kelderman.

Mollema is not the strongest time triallist, but with a 10th place he managed to limit the damages considerably ahead of today's final stage. Young Kelderman who was fourth in the Paris-Nice prologue and excels in time trials, was a little disappointed with his 11th place, but Elijzen was happy to see both captains among the best.

The race finishes this afternoon with its queen stage: the traditional mountaintop finish on Col de l'Ospedale.