The one-day Dwars door Vlaanderen took place over the Flemish cobbles on Wednesday with Russian Team Katusha active in the breaks throughout the day. At 200,2 km and featuring 12 hellingen climbs on the way to Waregem, the race provided valuable preparation for the on-going spring racing campaign.

“This was a good race for our team. We were very active all day, especially in the second part of the race. First Sven Erik Bystrøm and later in the first chasing group we had Viacheslav Kuznetsov and Alexey Tsatevich. Both of them did a very strong race with Alexey finishing 10th. This is a nice result in a very hard race, not only because the profile was difficult but also because of the bad weather. Kuznetsov worked well for Tsatevich. We tried to chase the leaders. In one moment Kuznetsov even went away alone and stayed for some time between the leaders and the chasers. But in the end the four riders in front played for the victory,” said team director Torsten Schmidt to the Katusha website.

A break of four riders, including current world champion Michal Kwiatkowski, held just over 1 minute with 30 km to go and the Kuznetsov chasing group of 11 riders worked well together behind them in an attempt to close the gap. At one moment Kuznetsov accelerated but no one could follow and Kuznetsov found himself chasing a motivated group growing closer to the finish line.

His efforts alone were not enough to bridge the gap and eventually the breakaway foursome battled for the race win. Belgian Jelle Wallays (Topsport Vlaanderen) attacked his break as they went under the 1 km banner and rode on to victory in front of his teammate Edward Theuns and Dylan Van Baarle of Cannondale-Garmin. Alexey Tsatevich sprinted in for tenth from the chasing group.

“We also had some bad luck today with three crashes. Marco Haller crashed in the first part of the race and his was a bad crash. It looks like he has a concussion and he will spend a few days in the hospital for observation. Also Rudi Selig and Vladimir Isaychev crashed later in the race, but they are ok,” concluded Torsten Schmidt.

Viacheslav Kuznetsov finished 14th, Sven Erik Bystrøm was 16th and Alexander Kolobnev did 19th.