Tim Wellens of Lotto-Belisol soloed to his first professional win in the mini Liege-Bastogne-Liege stage of the Eneco Tour and takes the overall lead by 7 seconds from Lars Boom. Dumoulin is third at 13 seconds heading into the final day.

Early Break of Big Names

On the 173km stage from Heerlen to Aywaille, dubbed as a mini Liege-Bastogne-Liege, an early break was established that had some very strong men in it. It contained Vanbilsen (Topsport) Cimolai (Lampre) Haas and Nuyens (Garmin) Van Melsen (Wanty) Dowsett (Movistar) Boonen (OPQS) and Moser (Cannondale). At the start of the day it was announced that Trek’s Fabian Cancellara had not started the stage to focus on bigger season goals.

BMC and Orica lead chase

BMC and Orica were keen to lead the chase to help their riders: BMC had multiple leaders and Orica had fast-finishing Keukeleire. However, they were still relatively lenient with the break and gave them a maximum of 7’52 before they began to chase hard. There were multiple sprints and bonus sprints on the route, Vanbilsen had won both of the first of each sprints, followed by Haas twice and Dowsett third in the first sprint, Nuyens third at the second one.

Lead comes down

As the breakaway topped La Redoute for the first time, their gap was about 3 minutes and Nathan Haas attacked just after the sprint at the top of the climb, won by Dowsett ahead of Haas and Moser. Haas opened a big gap quickly as the peloton began to up their pace, dropping Stannard, Markus, Mollema and Oss.

Haas caught

As the peloton began to swallow up Vanbilsen, Nuyens and attacker Yannick Martinez (Europcar), Haas won the final sprint ahead of his chasers, with Moser and Dowsett next across the line. However, Giant, Belkin and BMC upped the pace to remove some of their rivals in the bunch and this resulted in all but Haas being recaptured. This prompted Martinez’s teammate Alexandre Pichot to attack and Sep Vanmarcke eventually followed him and both men passed Haas.

Wellens attacks

Terpstra brough back Vanmarcke, who was then promptly dropped. Then Lotto’s Tim Wellens attacked a few moments after FDJ man Arnold Jeanesson had bridged to Pichot. They became a trio but not for long as it was clear Wellens was much stronger.

Dumoulin and Boom go

Race leader Tom Dumoulin and second place man Lars Boom attacked and bridged to a chase group including Van Avermaet, Grivko and Vanendert before BMC and Katusha brought that move back. Just before they could recapture them all though, Boom struck out once more.

Boom begins a TT

Boom flew by Pichot and Jeanesson and about a minute later the chase group, headed by Dumoulin did so too. Boom entered La Redoute on his own, but began to die and couldn’t catch Wellens, who won his first pro race by 50 seconds over Boom, who gained just two seconds on fast finishing Van Avermaet, who denied Dumoulin any bonus seconds.

But this all counted for nothing as Wellens had only needed 49 seconds to take the lead and this meant he now led the race with just one day to go, 7 seconds ahead of Boom, who had leapfrogged Dumoulin, who was now third at 13 seconds heading into the tough final day, which is a mini Amstel Gold Race.