"Lutz [Alexey Lutsenko] did a good job for me in the finale, and I was behind Kristoff but in the corner I lost his wheels and a lot of positions.

Those were the words of Andrea Guardini after stage two at 3 Daagse De Panne-Koksijde. Strong winds up to 55km per hour broke the peloton into pieces early, and strong teamwork by Maxat Ayazbayev, Arman Kamyshev and Daniil Fominykh brought Guardini back to the front for the final 40km circuits around Koksijde.

Guardini finished in the same time as stage winner Alexander Kristoff of Norway, and now heads to stage three on Thursday morning with a final chance for the sprint .

Stage four is an individual time trial on Thursday afternoon. Kristoff is the overall leader, and 42 riders are within one minute in General Classification. Lars Boom, Dmitriy Gruzdev and Alexey Lutsenko are all among those top riders and have strong chances to come into the Top-10 overall.