Dekker the Younger going for top five

Rabobank's Thomas Dekker has had a good Eneco Tour so far, as despite the fact that he has been working for his namesake Erik, he sits in eighth overall, just 25 seconds off the pace. With a time trial to finish the tour on Wednesday, he has every chance of moving up a few places on GC.

"In the coming two stages, I shouldn't lose any time," wrote Thomas in his column in De Telegraaf. "Wednesday there's the 26.3 kilometre closing time trial in Etten-Leur. A distance that suits me perfectly. As a time trial specialist, I should be able to count on myself. Erik Dekker is our man for the classement, but he will have a few rivals like Julich and Verbrugghe in the time trial. I hope to do a good time myself, so that I can gain a few places in the classement. At this point, a top five classification is my goal, but you never know. I hope to earn my first ProTour points, in any case."

Dekker also commented on the events that happened in Stage 4, when the peloton accidentally went the wrong way with around 60 km to go. The race had to be stopped and restarted again with 42.7 km left, but the existing three man breakaway was handicapped by another 2 minutes and was caught with 15 km to go.

"This was perhaps the strangest race in my career," wrote Dekker. "It was a strange experience that we rode the wrong way on the descent of the Cote de Wanne. And actually it only made the stage harder. We had to ride 232 kilometres through the Ardennes in any case. Now we rode an extra eight kilometres, and got extra climb dished up to us. You're never really happy about that. And if you have to stop once because of such an incident, the rhythm is completely gone. It was therefore not only a strange day, but also really hard."