Bryan Coquard (Europcar) has continued his fabulous first professional season by winning the Chateauroux Classic de l'Indre. In a crash-marred, he came fast from behind to hold off Italians Mattia Gavazzi (Androni) and Francesco Chicchi (Vini Fantini) in a photo finish.

Bryan Coquard has set the world on fire during his first professional season and today the Frenchman continued his fantastic run of success. In the traditional sprinter's race Chateauroux Classic de l'Indre, he showed his fantastic finishing kick when he held off Mattia Gavazzi and Francesco Chicchi in the expected bunch sprint.

The finish was marred by a big crash that left just 40 riders in contention at the end. Vini Fantini and IAM sped towards the finish, trying to set up Chicchi and Matteo Pelucchi for the win respectively.

Chicchi powered down the middle of the road with Gavazzi on his left and Coquard approaching rapidly on his right. The trio passed the line almost simultaneously but Coquard was never in doubt. He raised his arms in celebration and was later confirmed to be the winner of the race.

The talented Frenchman will get his next chance to chase success when he lines up in the sprinter-friendly World Ports Classic next weekend where he will target his 7th professional win.

A calm start

The 200,4km race is mostly flat and known as a race for sprinters. It finished with 5 laps on a small circuit in Chateauroux ahead of what was expected to be the usual bunch kick.

Everybody knew the script of the day and so there was no big interest in joining the day's early break. Nicolas Bazin (BigMat), Matthieu Boulo (Roubaix) and Lennard Hofstede (Rabobank) escaped almost immediately and after a short chase, they were joined by Ilya Davidenok (Astana).

Europcar in control

Those four riders were allowed to build up a gap of almost 6 minutes when Europcar started to control things, knowing that Coquard would have a good chance today. The team kept the gap stable at around 5 minutes for most of the day.

At the midpoint of the race, Cyril Lemoine (Sojasun) decided to try to bridge the 5-minute gap. He gradually edged closer but Accent.jobs, FDJ and Ag2r had now joined forces with Europcar and so the peloton also approached rapidly from behind.

Lemoine bridges the gap

Hofstede made a small attack on the day's final climb but was quickly reeled in. A few moments later, Lemoine accomplished his mission when he joined the front quartet.

As they started the first of the final laps with 36km to go, the gap was less than 1 minute and FDJ, Europcar and Ag2r had no intentions of letting the opportunity for a sprint finish slip away. They brought everything back together and strung things out to discourage any further attacks.

A new break is formed

Klaas Sys (Crelan) tried to change the predicted script and he was later joined by Florian Vachon (Bretagne) and Alexander Sushemoin (Astana) to form a front trio. They never got a big gap and their chances didn't get any better when Vachon missed a turn and fell back to the peloton.

With 7km, it was all over and the peloton sped towards the expected sprint at a high pace. A big crash reduced the number of contenders to just 40 riders but Vini Fantini and IAM kept the speed up. It was, however, all in vain as Coquard emerged as the fastest in a very close sprint.

Result:

1. Bryan Coquard 4.49.17

2. Mattia Gavazzi

3. Francesco Chicchi

4. Tom Van Asbroeck

5. Yves Lampaert

6. Matteo Pelucchi

7. Pieter Vanspeybroeck

8. Benjamin Giraud

9. Maxime Daniel

10. Roy Jans