Petacchi sprints to final stage win

Alessandro Petacchi (Lampre-ISD) and Michael Rogers (Team Sky) dominated the 2012 Bayern Rundfahrt. Petacchi won three stages, including the final one, while Rogers won the other two stages and the overall title.

In the final stage, Petacchi again won the mass sprint ahead of Allan Davis (Orica-GreenEdge) and Andre Schulze (NetApp). Rogers claimed the final title, with Jerome Coppel (Saur-Sojasun) and Vladimir Gusev (Katusha) rounding out the podium.

Petacchi called it “a perfect week. I won three stages and am very happy. My form is great. Now I will ride the Tour de Suisse and then the Tour de France and I want to win the green jersey there, as I did in 2010,” he told rad-net.de.

Rogers said, "It’s great to get the wins here. I haven’t won a field race like on Thursday since 2006. That was a relief but wherever you win it’s always nice. I don’t feel like I’m at my peak yet. I’ve pretty much come straight off a heavy training camp with a few days’ rest. It’s quite exciting times if we can achieve results like this coming off the back of quite an intense camp. I think that’s a sign of the team’s strength. I’m looking forward to hopefully seeing more of Team Sky riding on the front."

The final stage was marked by a three-man escape group of Karsten Kroon (Saxo Bank), Cedric Pineau (FDJ-Big Mat) and Maximilian Werda (Thüringer Energie). They broke away before the first mountain top and had up to a 5:40 minute lead before being caught again on the second lap of the closing circuit course.

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