Bert-Jan Lindeman gave everything he had in the Tour de Romandie. The Dutch rider of Team LottoNL-Jumbo spent the majority of the day in the breakaway and finished as 3rd rider in Swiss rain. Stefan Küng (BMC Racing Team) won the race.

Lindeman tried to escape the peloton early in the 4th stage of the Tour de Romany. He was part of a group of 6 breakaways, which thinned to a group of 4 in the latter part of the stage.

“Bert-Jan already told me that he intended to escape,” said Erik Dekker, team manager of Team LottoNL-Jumbo after the stage. “We finally realized that they could make it. You obviously hope that he achieves the maximum which was unfortunately not the case.”

“Realising I might have to ride the finals if we would make it, I tried to save my energy while part of the race leaders”, Lindeman stated after the race had been completed. “Unfortunately, Küng managed to gain a ten second advantage in the last decent."

In the kilometers that followed Lindeman did not manage to close in on the Swiss rider.

“I was not able to save my energy after that. We had to ride full speed to stay in front of the peloton. The 3rd place was the maximum I was able to achieve. It is a pity that I was not able to realize my plans.”

Either way, Team LottoNL-Jumbo managed to achieve a place on the podium in a World Tour-race.

“It is great that we showed we were able to take this chance in bad weather conditions”, Dekker said. “When a chance like this one appears, we need to ride as a team, put efforts in and remain motivated. We handled it really well today.”

The 5th stage of the Tour de Romandy is a tough mountain stage.

“We will see if Robert Gesink will excel”, Dekker said. “The most important thing for him is to ride such stages in order to improve. No matter if the results will resemble this or not.”