Lars van der Haar continued his strong start to 2015 with a win at the Centrumcross Surhuisterveen in The Netherlands, after having taken second at the previous day’s bpost bank trophee race in Baal.

Following a steady start, he soon came through to the front and pulled away with one other, Corne van Kessel (Telenet-Fidea), after a few laps of racing. These two stayed together for a few more laps before van der Haar put in his winning move.

Once he had pulled away van der Haar had a reasonably seamless ride, riding well both technically and physically to continue extending his lead over the rest right until the end where he finished with around one minute advantage.

After the race, van der Haar said: “I felt good today and the reduced running section played to my advantage. I wanted to get off to a bit of a steadier start than usual and ease into it but when the others started to go the legs had to wake up and this kick started me into action.

“It’s nice to get another win before heading to the national championships. It will be a hard fight as my main opponents are also riding strongly. This coming week I won’t be doing anything huge, but we plan to get some speed back into the legs after a hard few races. The nationals will be faster and we have a few sprint sessions planned so I should be in good shape. With the coaches we have a good plan and I’m confident to be there in good shape.”