Michael Mørkøv came close to grabbing the win on stage 4 of Tour de Wallonie, as the team launched a long sprint in the headwind. However, the fast Dane had to settle for second place, as Van Genechten snatched the win on the dying meters of the finishing straight. “We’ll try again tomorrow”, says Michael Mørkøv.
 
Elaborating on the result of stage 4, runner up Michael Mørkøv tells that headwind made it difficult to time the final burst for the line.
 
“It’s always tough to finish second in a race - it’s never something that you get used. Going into the final kilometer, McCarthy and Juul-Jensen went to the front to keep me out of trouble and at the front. Headwind sprints are always difficult to time, Breschel did a strong lead out for me and I had the front with 250 meters to go. All the time, I thought to myself that I was going to take the win but Van Genechten just edged me out on the final meters”, tells Michael Mørkøv, who remains positive ahead of the final stage of Tour de Wallonie:
 
“Tomorrow’s stage is similar to that of yesterday, where we had a punchy climb up to the finish. Looking at the finale, it suits Breschel quite well but also McCarthy, Juul-Jensen and I are going well at the moment. We will go out there, try to create a proper bike race and do an effort to grab that stage win”, adds Michael Mørkøv, who’s satisfied with the preparations leading up to his home country’s race, the Tour of Denmark.
 
“Tour of Denmark is most definitely a race, where I want to be in good shape. It’s the race of my home country and we want to be ready to chase top results there as well. I feel strong at the moment, we’ve had a concentrated month of preparations with altitude training camp in Livigno, Italy and we’re definitely in the midst of getting our race rhythm here in Wallonie”.

Summing up the stage 4 from Waterloo to Quaregnon, Tinkoff-Saxo sports director Lars Michaelsen comments that it’s a pity that the strong team effort didn’t pay off with a win.

 
“We had our focus on the final part of today’s stage and in the end Michael Mørkøv grabbed second place in the sprint decision. Had the finish line been two meters earlier, he would have won but Van Genechten just threw his bike coming from behind after Michael and the team had launched a long sprint in the headwind”, says Lars Michaelsen about the near miss, before adding about the stage as a whole.
 
“Today’s stage consisted of 164.6 relatively flat kilometers and we wanted to focus our attention and effort on the final two laps in the stage finale. After reeling in the break, Juul-Jensen and then Breschel made a move on some of the punchy, short hills. They were caught again but then the entire team took responsibility and switched its focus to setting up the final sprint, where we wanted to lead out Mørkøv. It was a collective effort, which I’m very happy to see and Michael showed that he has a lot of speed in the legs. It’s a pity that we didn’t get the win, but we are going well here in Belgium and we’ll try again on tomorrow’s hilly stage”, finishes Lars Michaelsen.