In the wake of a high-speed crash on Tuesday’s stage, Tinkoff-Saxo’s Matti Breschel abandoned Eneco Tour during stage 3 after deliberations with the team. Breschel, however, is expected to recover before his next races in August. Meanwhile, Tinkoff-Saxo tried to shelter the squad’s GC contenders ahead of the decisive time trial.

While Tom Boonen claimed the stage 3 win in a bunch sprint, Tinkoff-Saxo’s ace Matti Breschel had to withdraw from Eneco Tour following yesterday’s crash. Sports director Patxi Vila notes that Breschel’s focus will be on making a swift recovery from a blow to the hip and superficial wounds.

“Matti finally stopped today during the stage after the team and he took the decision. He had pain and it didn’t make sense to continue. In a situation like this, although he could have fought his way through the stage, it’s wiser to rest and recover. We’re sad to see him go but when you have a crash like that it would just be postponing the recovery, if he had continued. Now he will rest and return at Vattenfall Cyclassics later in August”, says Patxi Vila before adding:

“Matti has made a great performance the last weeks in Wallonie and with stage wins in Denmark. He then had a day to recover before Eneco before he was forced to the ground in the crash. We’ve praised him for this effort but we also have other cards to play starting tomorrow”.

After 172 mainly flat kilometers in Belgium, Tom Boonen was able to claim the sprint win with Tinkoff-Saxo’s Nikolay Trusov taking 18th place in the absence of a pure team sprinter. According to Patxi Vila, the squad’s focus was on saving energy ahead of Thursday’s intensive individual time trial.

“It was again a pretty stressful day, the final circuit was hectic – in fact the whole stage was hard but we focused on trying to save energy for tomorrow and the 13.9km time trial we face. Rogers and Boaro looked fine out there and we’ll see what happens. Today, we tried to give Trusov a chance in the finale, he was well positioned with 500 meters to go but as the sprint was opened he was boxed in”, finishes Patxi Vila.