Team Katusha’s rider Rüdiger Selig took 10th place today in the mass sprint at the second stage of the Tour de l’Eurometropole in Belgium. The stage was won by Arnaud Demare from FDJ, the overall leader of the race. He outsprinted Jens Debusschere from Lotto Belisol and Theo Bos from Belkin.

The stage of 171 km from Estaimbourg to Nieuwpoort started with a number of attacks, which created a big breakaway with Pavel Kochetkov from Team Katusha. Later this break was caught and a new leading group went away. But, this group also was neutralized with 45 km to go. Finally, a massive sprint decided the stage victory.

“Today I am very happy with Aleksandr Porsev, who did a nice race. Alex is just on the way to his best shape after a terrible crash at Eneco Tour, but already today he looked solid, and took some seconds on the intermediate sprint. He is looking forward for tomorrow’s stage too and I am happy with it. Unfortunately, with 4 km to go Marco Haller was involved in a huge crash. He did not get too serious of injures, but he was forced to abandon and to ask for medical help,” explained sports director of Team Katusha, Torsten Schmidt.

After stage 2 Arnaud Demare is the leader of the general classification. Aleksandr Porsev is the best Katusha’s rider overall with his 8th place at 18 seconds behind the leader.